


5 




U 




^gfaj. 


I 


llllvi 


\1 II 1 


m 


^ ^^Jlljllf 


» 


^^ ''III' ^'^^ lIP 


^ 


^fjll^ ^^' jiJ II illilliii 


III mt^ 


j^*!l| 


II_ifllilil If 


ml 


iiii ' ^iiiMlilllliii 


Im. 


^i!l 






m ^\ 1 

1 f'QA 




[1^ 




J^ 




jj^ 




IM 


■» Hi 


i 




^ 




Class t 

Book 

Copyright }j^_ 



CilPStRIGHT DEFOSm 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES IN 
VARIOUS RHYTHMS 



BY 

HENRY B. FULLER 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
1917 ^ 






\^n 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY HENRY B. FULLER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published February iqi-j 



FEB -7 1917 

©GI.A458950 



s. 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

A FEW of the present pieces already have been printed. 
For their reappearance here I am indebted to Poetry, the 
Chicago Tribune, and the New Republic. 



CONTENTS 

TOBIAS HOLT, BACHELOR S 

RIGMAROLE 9 

PATIENCE 14 

ARIDITY 21 

VEILS 27 

THE TWO APPRENTICES 33 

DELICACY 39 

POSTPONEMENT 47 

POLLY GREENE 53 

MANNERS 59 

DEATH OF AUNT JULIANA 66 

CHARM 72 

WHISPERINGS 79 

ALONZO GROUT 86 

VICTORY 92 

INTERLUDE 97 

THE STATUE 104 
t Vii ] 



CONTENTS 

THE "art of life" HI 

THE ALIEN 118 

TOWARD CHILDHOOD 124 

THE OUTSIDER 130 

GLARE 13® 

THE DAY OF DANGER 141 

CHAMELEON 148 

DELIQUESCENCE 153 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 



TOBIAS HOLT, BACHELOR 

At twenty- 
Holt seemed like other chaps 
In his own set and circle: 
He waltzed and redowa'd, 
Was handy-brisk at picnics, 
Took all the girls on buggy-rides, 
Ushered at weddings — 
In short, was generally popular. 

At twenty-eight. 

Though long regarded as a ** catch," 

He was still single; 

Had ushered all his chums and pals 

Into the married state. 

But stopped outside himself. 

Some said he had no enterprise, no spunk; 

Others thought he could see no individual girl 

Among the crowd, — the forest hid the trees ; 

And others still declared 

That what he really preferred to be 

Was Little Brother to the Whole Wide World. 

This last guess was nearest of the three; 
Holt was simply — kind. 
His little "life ideal" was just this: 
To be in pleasant, comfortable circumstances himself 
[ 3 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

(No scansion whatsoever, there!); 

To '*go'* with others similarly placed; 

To do these others various little favors, 

Kindnesses, obliging turns, 

And to make life, within such narrowed limits, 

A "nice'* and friendly thing. 

No passion; no vicissitudes; 

Good- will all round. 

Does such a spirit 

Help move the real world on.? 

Well, perhaps not. 

Now, as a bachelor in his thirties, 

Holt made the rounds : 

Dined with married friends. 

Brought presents for their children. 

And in the case of couples six months wed. 

And facing their first sag, 

Jumped in the threatening breach and pulled 

them through. 
He had the run of several pleasant homes. 
And Mrs. C. H. Mack, 
Whom he had often taken 
To parties and on buggy-rides. 
Always invited him to dinner 
On Thanksgiving Day. 

As he neared fifty. 
The various welcomes 
Grew more sedate; 

[4 1 



TOBIAS HOLT, BACHELOR 

Some, even cool. 

Folks had their own concerns, perhaps; 

And then, again, 

His youthful charm — this is just possible — 

Had become impaired. 

And one November 

The invitation for Thanksgiving 

Did not come. 

Panic! — no less. 

But it turned out 

Ahcia Mack had not forgotten: 

Sickness in the house. 

Heaven be blessed ! — 

Henceforward a new lease of life, 

With doubled works of friendliness and zeal, 

And yet — what might the future bring from 

others? 
So, a high resolve to gird him, 
To hold the slipping ground. 
And last through to the end. 

Daily Holt became 
More strenuous, more assiduous: 
The sliding clutch must stick. 
More calls, more flowers, more loans of books, 
More friendly oflSces, 
More theater-parties for married pairs. 
More jokes and funny stories 
Laboriously rehearsed and sprung. 
He learned the two-step : 
[5 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Young girls would dance with him 
When younger partners failed, 
And, if the daughters of his early friends. 
Would call him "Uncle Toby." 
And gay young dogs, 
Who 'd not yet learned the latest step, 
But meant to, 

Would snicker on the outskirts : 
Tail-Holt, they 'd say, was better Holt than 
none! 

He kept the run of birthdays, 

And of anniversaries 

Husbands themselves forgot. 

And one December, 

When fate had been adverse, 

He set aside all notion 

Of a new business-suit 

And put the money saved 

Into a round of presents. 

"Not much," people might say. 

On opening their parcels; 

"But, anyway, he's not forgotten us 

Completely." Thus he'd arrange 

A welcome, not too chill, 

For one year more. 

Holt, at sixty-five, 

Was finding life still busy 

But rather bleak; 

[6] 



TOBIAS HOLT, BACHELOR 

And one day he lay do^Ti in bed, 

A bachelor in a boarding-house, 

To think about it. 

Next day the doctor came. . . . 

Well, now. 

Shall I be brusque, or sentimental? 

Communicative, or quite mute. 

Leaving it all to you? 

Did he get well, or die? 

Did people rally, or remain away? 

Dear reader, you shall have it as you choose. 

Did fellows at the clubs say, "H'm!" 

And keep their chairs? 

Did a wide circle read about his death 

Only to say, "Well! well!"; 

And did the office satisfy itself 

With a ten-dollar wreath? 

Or did a wave of general kindliness — 

Equivalent for all the little waves 

Himself had set in motion — 

Gather impetus 

And waft him out 

On the Great Sea? 

Did Alicia Mack, 

Or others of that early coterie. 

Come to his doleful room 

With sympathy and flowers 

(And even, mayhap, 

[ 7] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

A favorite grandchild 
To clamber on his bed), 
Showing a friendly tear in worldly eyes? 
Did far-back chums sit down beside his pillow. 
Sucking their cane-heads, saying: 
"Cheer up, old chap; you're coming through 
all right!"? 

Yes, perhaps he did 

Come through all right — 

With much or little sympathy — 

To take up, with what zest he could. 

The frantic role 

Of buying favors from a cooling world. 

Spend as you will. 

It's sad to be old, and alone. 

(Fudge! that's the very thing 

I tried hard not to say!) 



RIGMAROLE 

The word's undignified, I know, 

And does n't even say quite what I mean. 

My meaning is approximately this : 

The turning back of things 

On their own selves. 

To take another start. 

"Eternal recurrence" might be made to do, 

Save for the rumbling, stumbling r's. 

"Everlasting return," though anapaestic. 

Here seems cacophonous; 

And even "Endless chain" will scarcely serve. 

Well, John M. Hart was a professional man, 
Or meant to be. 

And married young — at twenty-four 
(A longish chance, say I). 
Heaven blessed him — if you like: 
At thirty 

He had a little family of three. 
Think what that means: — 
'Mongst many other things. 
Wakeful nights. 
Perambulators on the porch. 
Little tempers, unfolding minds. 
Bills 

(That deadly word shall stand all by itself), 
f 9 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

And slavery (qualified) for mother 

And father too. 

Through years. 

No leisure, no outings; 

Few books and pleasures; 

Every spare cent put in the Children's Pool. 

Hum! 

When the elder boy was ready for high school, 
And the little girl well through kindergarten, 
Freedom (qualified) seemed almost won: 
Husband and wife could take an evening off. 
Or spare the change for an occasional book. 
And then — Hart found himself a widower. 
(A bit too much like blank verse, hereabouts.) 
After a lonely, perplexed year or so. 
Another face was fair, and he again complete. 
(Are Alexandrines better? No.) 

Thus, in due course, another brood. 

Then, wakeful nights, 

Perambulators on the porch. 

More little tempers, 

More unfolding minds. 

Bills . . . 

But why repeat? 

Once again, clamps for the purse. 

Crimps for the mind, 

Shrinkage in life's fair opportunities. 

He found himself 

[10] 



RIGMAROLE 

Back in the same old school, 

But with a diiferent seatmate; 

And though so eager and so able 

To enter the next grade, 

Turning the pages back and "taking a review." 

And then, in middle life, 

Fate having dealt a second blow, 

He wedded once again. 

His older children setting up or settling down, 

His younger past the nursery and ofiF to school, 

Another of Eve's daughters rose to view. 

And her face, too, was fair. 

Whence a single child. 

The flower of his old age: 

A novel episode for his young wife, 

A thrice-told tale for him. 

One child may work the tyranny of six. 

Hence, wakeful nights. 

Perambulator for the porch 

(Or, rather, vestibule; it was a flathouse, now); 

One more little temper. 

One more unfolding mind, 

Bills . . . 

Yes, the regular rigmarole. 

Shades of the prison-house began to close 

Upon the aging man; 

And he who longed for a post-graduate course 

Found himself set back 

[ 11 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

To matrimony's earlier pages — 
Life's primary pupil still. 
For others wider scope and higher aims; 
For him, 't would seem, 
i A meager office and a humdrum home. 

One evening. 

After his eldest son and that son's wife 

Had wheeled their first-born to the door 

In his perambulator. 

Hart, half -dazed, bestowed a grand-dad's blessing; 

Then, in his "library" (it was n't much), 

He mused, alone: 

"Lord, what is man?" 

(Should he have "caps" or agate lower case?) 
" Is he protagonist or supernumerary? 
Hero or martyr? 
Nincompoop or sage? 
Why is he here? 
Where from? 

What for — what purpose meant to serve? 
And what the object of this Squirrel-cage — 
This endless Merry-go-round of doubtful joy? 
What issue for this mortal Shoot-the-shoots? 
Where does it all get us? 
How do we link up 
With Seen and Unseen? 
What gain, through all this stir and stew. 
For me — or for Another? 
\ 12 ] 



RIGMAROLE 

Why must we poor mortals . . . ? " 

He dozed. 

And if the answer came to him in sleep 

It left him ere he woke : — 

The world 's still dark. 



PATIENCE 

Sing, muse! — 

But no; that opening's stale. 

I'll sing, myself: 

I'll chant Malvina Shedd, 

Our first highpriestess of gentility. 

I've called this odelet "Patience." 

Might as well call it "Faith and Patience"; 

Or better still, 

"Faith, Hope, and Patience" — 

That blessed, potent triad 

Which moves the mountain round. 

Don't sniff if I 've implied 

Malvina was "genteel"; 

For this queer word 

Had standing in the 'sixties. 

That epoch when our heroine 

Planted her standard in the Middle West 

And cried, "Ye choice ones, gather round!" 

But few there were to answer. 
Almost alone, Malvina, 
A bride just from the East, 
Stood in the void among the ribald many, 
f 14 1 



PATIENCE 

A "remnant" of just one, 
Playing her little game of Solitaire. 

The town itself, 

Purest ramshackle, 

Sprawled in a morass. 

Star-gazing at the future; 

And Horace W. Shedd, 

Then in hides and tallow. 

Gazed with the rest. 

He saw things big, and all he saw came true. 

Yet even he could think his wife 

A futile sibyl. 

Later, he owned his error. 

Malvina first rose full-orbed on the town 
In *sixty-five, at the Sanitary Fair. 
Her booth, here, was the best of all. 
Early she took the lead and never lost it : 
Next season, no sewing-class for freedmen 
More sought than hers, — 
No front steps. 

In the long summer twilights by the lake. 
More peopled. 

The winter following. 
She formed a dancing class — 
A thing so choice that few could qualify. 
She named it "Entre Nous,*' or "Nonpareil," 
Or something of the sort, 
f 15 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

And made kid gloves and swallow-tails 
De rigueur. 

But soon she fled town mud for rural joys. 

In a new suburb ^ — sort o' — on the prairie's edge. 

She reared a "villa," so to speak. 

Within a "shrubbery"; — 

"lona Lodge" she called it; 

And if you owned a clarence 

You might drive out there Sunday afternoon 

And call. 

She next devised 

A Sunday afternoon in town — 

Oh, wickedness! 

Some few bold spirits 

Braved public censure to attend. 

They told of cakes and ices 

Passed by a man in livery, 

The first such creature spied 

Within the corporate limits. 

Where had she got him? 

Doubtless some foreigner — Swiss, maybe. 

"A flunky!" said the reading public; "faugh!" 

And while the general throng 
Still went to Lotta or to "Uncle Tom," 
Madam put on her ermine cape 
And heard Ristori from a box. 
The dizzied gallery gaped; but the parquet 
\ 16 1 



PATIENCE 

Looked and approved and took our friend 
For social leader, now, past all dispute. 

On New Year's day our heroine 
Kept open house. 

Tom came, and Dick, and Harry — 
For now she had a following indeed. 
Tom was all right, and Dick would do; 
But Harry! 

He was so numerous and objectionable! 
And when he grew too many 
And the press complained 
That New Year wine started 
A multitude of youths 
Down to the drunkard's grave, 
Malvina cut things short. 
She was the first 

To hang a ribboned wicker-basket by the front- 
door bell 
And let men drop their cards. 
Other ladies followed: 
For January first 

Exclusive and retired recueillement 
Became the mode. 

The dancing class had long been dropped : 
Malvina gave a "german" 
In her own new house (or mansion), 
With favors. 

Dozens of young clerks danced till three; 
\ 17 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Then at their desks by eight. 

I don't know how they did it, but they did. 

Black headhnes, the next morning, 

Told much about the fete, 

But did not tell us that. 

Nor did they say 

That in the wee sma' hours 

Malvina lit a cigarette — the first. 

Next coup : 

After all this, Malvina went abroad 

To meet the old-world grandeurs face to face. 

Presently word came back 

That told of her at court — 

London, of course; and pretty soon 

The Elite Herald 

(This sheet ran weekly for almost a year) 

Pictured her in a court-train 

And ostrich-feathers. 

Enough: that put her foot upon our necks; 

She ruled us ever after. 

Thence her first right 

To every passing prince — 

A right she had some time enjoyed 

With passing operatic stars. 

Who sang in her salon. 

(Salon, yes; not drawing-room; 

Parlor, still less.) 

[ 18 1 



TATIENCE 

That was the trouble with the stars: 

Passing; errant, not fixed. 

Brief seasons at this theater or that; 

Troupes from other towns. 

Thrown at us for a fortnight; 

But there still lacked 

An opera of our own. 

With settled places 

For our leaders and our queens. 

But let that pass. 

The years went on. 

Malvina, with a great gray pompadour. 

Took on a hyphen; 't was the first in town. 

Malvina Woode-Shedd — thus she signed the notes 

That brought the season's debutantes 

To pour at teas. 

Think ye, young buds. 

That teas, and comings-out, and such-like things 

Have always been in this our burg? 

You do.? Just guess again. 

After a while a great big yellow hall 
Put a new row of boxes at the back : 
Our own, own op'ra in full bloom at last! 
Malvina, old but strong. 
Seized on the middle box, 
As by a right none could gainsay. 
And there she sat: 

A Faith who had endured through all; 
[ 19 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

A Prophetess whose fondest words 
Were now come true. 

Sound, music! trumpets, blare! 

Ring thro' the vast hall's blaze! 

In one admiring gaze 
Let city's brave and fair 
At great Malvina stare ! 

Loq. — "View, with due amaze, 

Our tall tiara's rays, 
The gold-spun robe we wear!" 

Such scene was, from the start, 
Before her vatic eyes. 

Steadfastness was the key; 
Well has she played her part: 
Band, chorus, public, rise, — 

Greet her with three times three ! 

A sonnet (narrow width) — 

As you perceive. 

Would it were wider! 

For, 

A gallant, persevering spirit. 

In whatsoever field. 

Earns all the praise 

This grudging world can give. 



ARIDITY 

The world is all before us, where to choose: 
Spoon River or Bird Center, 
Or something in between — 
Nay, that's not so; 
Youth does not choose; age cannot. 
Often the young 

Accept the world-scheme far too readily; 
The older man, if he objects. 
Objects too late; he's lived to find 
The world now woven for him. 
Enmeshed, he can but be 
What he has come to be — 
As here, as here; 
Or, indeed, 
, < As anywhere. 

Well, to begin again: 
The happy man is he 
Who lives by something 
And for that something dies. 
Number One lives, let us say. 
By wife and child, 
And dies for them 

Upon the threshold of the blazing home. 
Number Two lives by his college 
And dies for it upon the gridiron 
[21 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Amid the shouts of pleasured thousands. 

Number Three, indulging an odd passion, 

Lives by hoary, violent Rome, 

And dies there, or thereafter. 

Of fever, or malaria 

(I sweep aside all newer thought 

On the mosquito). 

Or sheer homesickness; — 

O Rome, so fair, so old, so far away! 

Number Four — 

Well, Number Four was Benjamin C. Hill, 

And he lived by and died for 

The Merchants' National Tax-Title & Trust Co. 

Hill made his debut 

By helping to take orders, 'cross a counter. 

For abstracts of title: an uncle found the job. 

The docile boy, mouldable to anything. 

Slid into the place without a question. 

Within a fortnight he was quite at home; 

And soon he saw, beyond mistake, 

His life-road open. 

Thence to law-school at night; 

Then, laureled. 

Back for the remainder of his days 

To snuggle up against the nourishing breast 

Of the Trust Company. 

Five decades followed, years 
Of instruments, continuations, 
[ 22 ] 



ARIDITY 

Quit-claims, releases, what you will. 

Kinks, kinks, kinks — 

Sometimes he put them in, 

Sometimes he took them out; 

But either, and ever. 

With reUsh and enjoyment. 

He never rose to be the head of all, 

Yet in his own department 

He was perfect, prized, well-paid. 

He frilled the leaves of abstracts all day long; 

Then took them home at night 

And read them in his den. 

Like Descartes, he could say: 

"I think; therefore I am." 

A new Spinoza, he was drunk 

Not with God, but with God*s footstool. 

Like Herbert Spencer, he could clip close 

Th' Unknowable — 

(Unknowable to us, but plain to him). 

He knew the city*s spread 

From Rogers Park to Hegewisch, 

And out past Austin : 

Subdivision by subdivision. 

From Original Town 

To last Addition. 

A Simeon Schopenhauer, 

He looked down from his lonely column 

And viewed the world, 

Not as Wille und Vorstellung, 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

But as sheer Real Estate. 

And he was always making points — 

An Indian fakir on his bed of spikes. 

Man (Istly) delighted him not (Shakespeare) : 

He saw the Bete Humaine 

(O Zola ! O thy chanting choirs !) 

Merely as Grantor and Grantee; 

Nor (2ndly) a dark eye in woman (Byron) : 

He married early a pale-pupiled blonde, 

And there it ended; 

Nor (3rdly) childhood's happy laughter (Anybody). 

At home he was only 

The passive background. 

His wife had clubs and causes. 

And made as if they satisfied her. 

His adopted son — or hers — 

Went off to college, much to HilFs relief. 

Thus domesticity slid by the board; 

And so did civics, art, church, charity. 

And all the rest. 

Once he was asked to go 

Before the Tax Commission 

And aid reform. 

But no; that interest, though allied. 

Was not his, quite: 

He kept his special corner. 

This corner was retired 
From natural daylight 

[24 ] 



ARIDITY 

And from outside air, ' 

And he lived there for years, 

And years : 

The Company was always going to build — 

And never did. 

When he was nearing fifty 

Quarters such as these 

Began to tell: 

His boy, returning home, 

Found him more sapless, 

More jejune, than ever; 

He was drying up. 

They pushed him toward the links. 

He sat upon the club-house porch 

And viewed the landscape o'er: 

A spread-out checker-board of quarter-sections 

Beneath a sky 

"Clear" sometimes, sometimes "clouded." 

And here he amorously eyed 

His pocketful of memos. — 

Such was his exercise. 

The years went on — 
Ten, twelve, fifteen. 
He was but a wraith, 
A disembodied intellect. 
He never made complaint. 
Even on his poorest days; 
No protest at the start, 
[ 25 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

No protest now. 

For him, one life, 

And he was leading it. 

He never longed for alma mater; 

He never whined for Rome. 

And then, at sixty-six, the end. 

No hope for a continuation: 

He quit-claimed life; 

And Death, the Great Conveyancer, 

Carried him away. 

Perhaps 't was pernicious anaemia; 

Perhaps, arterial sclerosis; 

Perhaps — Why should we specify? 

Heigh-ho! 

Eight ascetic verbalists. 

Drawn from the office, — 

Eight grammarians 

(A reference, properly obscure, 

To Browning), — 

Bore him to the grave. 

Well, well; 

Here ends his abstract and brief chronicle. 

Of course I cannot speak for you; 

But, as for me 

(Despite the consolations of philosophy 

Attempted near the start). 

It makes me rather sad. 



VEILS 

Do shadows ever lift completely? 
Why, yes — one might suppose so. 
But this particular shadow; let us see. 

I '11 make no bid for sympathy 

On behalf of the poor girl 

By saying she was lovely — 

She was not; she had the average looks; 

Or that she was sweet — 

For she was not; she had the average disposition; 

Or that she was poor — for she was not: 

On the contrary, she (or her father) was rich — 

Flagrantly so. That made the trouble. 

In a way. 

He invented, owned, dispensed 
A proprietary medicine. 
Its title and its function 
Were both absurd and just a bit repellent. 
Wide and shrewd publicity had made the name 
A household word throughout the land — 
A by- word too: 

The baser press, the cheaper clubs. 
Made jokes and gibes about it. 
Those of the former were not copied far; 
Those of the latter passed by word of mouth. 
[27] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Yet a result was reached: 
Efl3uviurQ. 

From fifteen on to twenty-three — 

Years sensitive — 

Our heroine caught distasteful whiffs. 

High school was cruel, 

College most unkind; 

Society, in certain circles, nudged and snickered. 

Only marriage, with change of name, 

Seemed to hold out promise of relief. 

Her parent, sturdy man. 

Could see no reason for this pother. 

"What did the silly people mean? — 

Business was business : 

He had gone ahead 

On principles quite proper and approved. 

No thought humanitarian or philanthropic 

Tainted or prejudiced the enterprise. 

His stuff was made to sell — 

Like blankets, bonds or anything; 

The buyer must beware. 

Indeed a closer study of his formula 

Than law exacted 

Would have shown. 

Through the employment of ingredients 

Cheap and deleterious, 

A competence not to be found everywhere. 

Consider, too, his plant, 

[ 28 ] 



VEILS 

Increasing in spread and bulk with every year; 

Count up his office force. 

Great and growing constantly; 

Think, too, of his big selling-staff — 

Its wide and ever-widening endeavors. 

It was a business, like any other — 

Save that, where other brought in paltry thousands. 

This brought in millions. 

His daughter's foreground was most fair to view, 

For she had everything these millions could buy; 

But in the background spread that horrible decor 

Which blighted her young life. 

How many veils, skillfully lowered. 

Would be required to shut it from the sight, 

Eradicate it from the general memory.? 

She married: a gauzy veil, the first. 

Descended and took away 

Her over-famous name. 

Her husband was too sensible, ambitious, and robust 

To be fastidious; 

He had means himself. 

And used his new connection to make them greater. 

The awful name still stared 

From billboards and electric signs, 

But was no longer hers. 

Next went the name itself: a great, grasping trust 
Dropped down a second veil 
[ 29 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Between Madama and the Horror: 

Her father's business became 

But one in a mushed dozen. 

As a separate entity it vanished; 

Its memory faded slowly, 

Like an evil smell. 

Shortly her husband died 

And left her more than rich. 

Next, her father, his occupation and identity 

Gone from him, passed on too. 

And all the millions, various and several. 

Were hers alone. She went abroad. 

America might still remember, 

But Europe did not even know. 

The second son of an impoverished earl 
Presently dropped another veil, the third. 
Her atmosphere was now 
The soft, dense air of Devon. 
That innocent English country-side, 
Even London's self, was guiltless of offense: 
No clouded hoardings tortured her by day; 
No pillared fires affronted her by night. 
, She had escaped at last 
The smarting stigma of her girlhood days. 

The elder brother died in undue course; 
The father, too, in due course followed. 
A countess, please you, ere five years. 
[30] 



VEILS 

Places in town and country; 

Well regarded by the great and high; ^ 

Mother of Lord Dashton and the Honourable Guy; 

All going like a charm; and then . . . 

Have you been waiting for the words, "and then"? 

I hope not. If you have, 

Learn, ignoble reader, I shall not go so far 

As you expect. 

Would you have me say 

The Trust invaded Britain, 

Again tormenting Lady Blankleigh*s eyes? 

Should I tell how girlhood friends. 

Under the stress of social competition. 

Dropped searing words of secret ancient history? 

Or would you prod me up till I record 

How some society journal, flippant and mahgnant. 

Harped on the hideous theme 

And drove the poor soul frantic? 

Well, I tell you plainly, 

It simply shall not be! 

What had she done amiss? 

Why should we persecute her? 

Why irritate her husband, mortify her sons? 

You're ungenerous. V a vial 

Behind its triple veil, 

In the shimmering, silvery, shadowy distance, 
Coils that odious beast, the Business, 
Within his stalactitic cave, 
[31 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Hiccoughing dollars which combine in guineas; 

And in the foreground's golden glare 

Our Lady Bountiful 

Plays with high spirit a showy, dazzling part, 

And does it well. 

The Income Tax on new-world fortunes 

Steals up at intervals upon the fecund beast. 

To spring and seize; 

The Expatriate too 

Is now and then reproached. 

But let her live where home and duty call. 

And let her, free from any shadow 

(Some, after all, are best unlifted and unlighted). 

Enjoy her present glory free from past chagrin. 



THE TWO APPRENTICES 

Yes, they once worked side by side 

In the same art-school. 

They went in, close together. 

At the small end of the horn; 

And when they came out at the big, 

They were far apart indeed. 

Queer, queer; but you have only to listen. 

"Listen," of course, means, "read." 

Both began with the cubes and cones. 

Next, charcoal heads of What 's-his-Name, 

That Greek god with the broad nose 

And other easy "planes." 

Then plums, bandannas and terra-cotta vases, 

All in oil. 

Then the frizzle-haired Cuban in chaps and serape. 

Lastly they went to Paris and splashed about 

In that big tank of gamboge and vermilion. 

"A" was a scream from the start. 
He had personality and wielded it. 
He got mentions and medals beyond count. 
He sent back things to local exhibitions — 
Loud, frantic, thumping mythologies for ceilings, 
And such-like. 

The world's fairs nabbed him before he was thirty, 
\ 33 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

And put acres of space at his disposal. 
Everybody said he had brio and "punch." 
The sober few might find him exotic, flagrant — 
Even not quite decent . . . 
But, anyway, he had a vogue. 
And a vast one. 

And"B"? 

He buzzed along, and nobody noticed. 

He did "illustrations": — 

Folklore and fairy tales for the youngsters; 

Birds, flowers, babies, friendly beasts; 

His drawings, reduced to the width of your palm, 

or less. 
Were printed in "readers." 

When the two met back home. 
Some few years later, 
"A" quizzed "B." 
For when "A" stooped to birds. 
They were not hens and robins; 
They were crested swans and heraldic eagles. 
His flowers were not hollyhocks and pinks; 
No, they were amaranths and asphodels. 
His babies did not sprawl on any nursery floor; 
They were cherubs with protuberant foreheads 
And allegorical intentions. 
His beasts were not those of the barnyard 
But of the apocalypse : 
Griffins, dragons, unicorns, chimeras 
[34] 



THE TWO APPRENTICES 

Swept along on a zoological whirlwind. 

"So decorative!" said the starers in the courts of 

honor. 
And "B" went on making primers for the young 

starers at the alphabet. 

**B" prosaically married a sweet young creature 

Just as **A'* ran off with a fellow-artist's wife. 

The scandal helped — for a while. 

"He is a genius," said the world's fairs: 

"We must have him, all the same." 

So our rake progressed to matters bigger still, 

And drew down bigger pay. 

He blew his bubble. 
Huge, iridescent. 
Then his hand began to tremble. 
And the glittering, distended globule to sway. 
Rivals pressed; 

But he would not do smaller things for smaller pay. 
Then the fairs came to a stop, 
And he was on the edge. 
Then he began to topple. 

Perhaps he was not fit either for prosperity or adver- 
sity. 
[Moral reflection : how few of us, 
Alas! are.] 

A row of stars, just here, 
Would mark the flight of time; 
[35 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

But I will simply say: Years passed. 

"B" pegged away at his poultry, 

And his posies, 

And his dogs and cats, 

And his kiddies. 

He now owned a country-place, 

And found all his models on the spot 

(Even the children — till they grew too old) ; 

And he had a car 

To take his drawings into town 

And place them before an attentive publisher. 

And he added acres to acres, 

x\.nd sent his boys to college. 

And Rosy and Betty to that nice school 

In Massachusetts. 

And his wife, who was "dressy," 

Dressed — expensively. 

And his boys, who were "sporty," 

Sported — expensively. 

And his girls, who were "refined," 

Refined daily. 

It cost; oh, how it cost! 

But the cruse — 

Or shall I say, the paint-tube.'^ — 

Never ran dry: 

The hens, the hollyhocks, 

The lammies and the darling babes 

(These last, in retrospect) 

Paid for it all. 



36 



THE TWO APPRENTICES 

And once, at twilight's fall 

(The tremolo is needed here), 

A wanderer, 

Who might have been in tattered velveteen 

And worn a straggling Vandyke beard, 

Paused at the lodge 

With hollow, hungry eyes 

(It was the wanderer, not the lodge, that had 

them) — 
Oh, shucks! IVe thrown myself quite off the track: 
I'll pull another stop and start afresh. 
Well, then, what I 'd say is this : 
A limp, bedraggled eagle, who had once 
Full-faced the sun and furied in its glare, 
Dropped in the dusky farmyard; 
And it was, or might have been — 
Oh, you know who. 
And you know too 
That dash and flash, in the long run. 
Are nought; 
That allegory withers; 
That chic and brio soon pinch out. 
And gorgeous "decorative schemes" 
Fade as the grass. 
But — 

Children will always come. 
And they must learn their letters; 
And they must hear, in endless line. 
The old-time tales. 
And see their dusky visionings 
[37] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT . 

Made vivider upon the painted page. 

Birdies and flowers will always have a vogue; 

Babies and household pets will never end their reign. 

Pile up your palaces, 

And cover them with sprawling splendors, 

Flaunted through myth and symbol: 

The humbler artist 

Has but to marshal 

With lifted brush 

His chicks and chickadees 

And lead the smiling charge 

That strikes those proud walls down. 



DELICACY 

Come, get into my car 

(I never had one, and I never shall 

Have one; but luxury is reached with ease 

Here on white paper). 

James, speed us toward the north. 

There I will spread before you 

A country-side composed exclusively 

Of gentlemen's estates : 

Chateaux and manor-houses and baronial halls 

Elizabethan, Louis Quinze, Beaux -Arts, or 

What-you-will, 
With sunken gardens, 
Pleached walks and pleasances, 
Well-tamed ravines 

And cultivated bluffs from whose sandy rims 
One sees a great blue water. 
Nor must I forget some minor matters : 
The lodges, greenhouses and garages 
Which, for our purpose. 
Are more important still. 
Remember these. 

Within one palace, — 
The most determinedly. 

Most incongruously monumental of them all, - 
Resides our magnate's wife 
f 39 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

(With family and serviiu, of course; 

But I 'm concerned with her alone. 

Or nearly). 

How the money came. 

The fortune vast and sudden, 

I'll not stop to say: 

Banking, perhaps; 

With interest (called discount) paid before 't was 

due. 
And half-days pared away, and five days lopped 
From off the year; — no, that might be too slow. 
Well, traction, possibly; for it is wonderful 
How fast the nickels and the dimes pile up. 
Or deals in grain or stocks upon some "board"; 
Or Advertising, with a good-sized A. 
This last, I 'm told, brings in enormous gains 
And leads at once to pergolas and pools. 

All this, however. 

Delays my present purpose and concern. 

That 's with the lady's character, which was 

Flawless, superb; 

Bourgeois, fundamentally — 

If one may use the word 

Without misunderstanding. 

She was not greatly different in wealth 

From what she 'd been in circumstances narrow — 

Save that she felt a bit the better armed 

To keep herself unspotted from the world. 



40 



DELICACY 

Shall we review her early years? 
Day-school, then, with other little girls 
Nice, if not choice; 
And Sunday-school, 
With commendation and a gift book 
From her dear pastor; 
Then, boarding-school. 
Carefully chosen, but not too costly. 
Then a few seasons of society, 
In unpretentious forms; 
Then followed courtship, somewhat self- 
contained — 
Not tepid, yet not ardent; 
Then came a nice home wedding; 
Then two darling children. 
Accomplished in due course; 
Then some years of simple home life; 
And then "success," as it is called, 
With transplantation 
To more ambitious and emphatic scenes. 

When she arrived, the chatelaines round about 
Viewed her with glance deliberate 
But not unfriendly. After a while, 
They found her rather nice — 
Not vulgar, not vainglorious — ■ 
And took her in. 

Now, do you think that all these various ladies 
Were different essentially, 
In genesis and progress, 
[41 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

From the new-comer? 

Why, not at all, — 

They'd merely got there first: 

Good, pleasant, friendly, worthy people, 

Correct in all their ways and manners, 

Women and men alike. 

Through years and years. 

No scandal, no irregularity. 

No slightest impropriety. 

Had sullied the fair name 

Of this chaste settlement 

And its charmed circle. 

The church-spires evangelically forbade; 

The lovely little town library 

Said softly, "No." 

The press, in the big city 

Twenty miles away, said. 

If saying so were necejssary, 

"Oh, beware!" 

You see, then, that these fortunati 

Were really not aristocrats: 

They heeded what the lesser public thought. 

And walked accordingly — through 

A white world draped and deadened in the snow. 

"What!" you will ask; "'midst these three 

thousand souls 
No passion, no mischance?" 
Ah, me! I greatly fear 
You have your mind too strongly fixed 
[ 42 ] 



DELICACY 

On Gothic gables and Renaissance towers 

And "period" furnishings. 

Turn back your thoughts 

Toward lodge, garage and cottage. 

Now and then our good and happy folk 

Would sin and suffer and atone. 

But do it all vicariously: 

The tenantry, retainers, unregarded "hands" 

Such as merely filled the chinks 

Of this great social edifice — 

Sometimes came forward on occasion 

(Such an occasion as we now approach). 

To act as proxies. 

Among those plain persons 

Who, in middle life, or past, 

Were piecing out their days 

By service with the rich and great. 

We find some young folks, two at least : 

A girl of seventeen, still busy with her books 

At a good school near by; 

A youth of twenty, one whose fixed intent 

To rise above his "station" 

Had pushed him to the city and to college. 

One of this pair, I '11 not say which. 

Acknowledged, through parental ties, 

A certain fealty to our chatelaine; 

The other, an allegiance, not unlike. 

In other quarters. 



43 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

These two young things, 

In over-charged mid-August, 

Had met and mingled fooHshly. 

One did not understand 

What admiration might actually mean; 

And neither realized to what sad lengths 

Their dalliance would lead. 

The world, the cruel-eyed, was to be faced; 

Neither knew what to do 

Toward beating back the coming horror 

Into the dark. 

One morning tracks in the winter woods. 

Winding and weaving to and fro. 

Preluded the whole tale — 

With all its pauses, stumblings, hesitations, 

Pleadings and despair; 

A girlish figure, decently composed, 

Lying in the snow. 

With poison-grains re-crystallized on pallid lips; 

Near by, within a lesser maze of footmarks. 

Which spoke of dread, of vacillation, of remorse. 

The body of a youth all stark, 

A weapon at his side; 

Within two homes 

Two simple mothers insisting fondly, 

The one upon a daughter's stainlessness. 

The other on the pure nobleness of a son. 

All unavailing 

The spires, 

[44] 



DELICACY 

The sweet reading-room, 

The press: 

Penalty paid, 

There in the very scene 

Of earlier pleasures. 

Came the authorities, 

Tramping through the snowy woods; 

The pressmen expeditiously pictured them — 

Those once-green, dusk recesses, 

Now so stripped and cold: 

Our woods, our own estate, the sylvan scene 

Where our d-ear, cherished Mabel, just that age. 

Would sometimes stoop to pluck first violets 

in May. 
To our Lady's sense 
Every slight swell or hollow 
Shadowed by oak or thorn 
Shuddered and shivered 
'Neath the profaning touch of sin. 
She herself, like a smirched ermine. 
Turned up appealing and protesting eyes 
And twitched and slunk away from common sight. 
Papers were barred from the chateau. 
And Mabel, whose chaste eye and ear 
Must never know such horrors. 
Was swiftly sent to friends 
Far, far outside the zone of local news, 
The day before some six young girls in white 
And a soft-spoken, cautious clergyman 
[45 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Stood beneath one of the spires 

To put the best face on a naughty deed. 

Next spring the family left for other scenes 

Before the violets came. 

When they returned 

(And with them Mabel 

In all her innocent, girlish charm) 

The sparse woods had been leveled 

And in their place there stood 

(Proof of laborious months 

Spent by the soil's new owner) 

A rustling field of corn 

All ready for the harvest. 

Here and there a simple bloom of aster 

Or ripening spray of goldenrod 

Stood with bright confidence 

Amid the humpy furrows, 

And no kind hand stretched forth 

Through the rank growth 

To save it from the cursory, rapacious reaper 

That even then 

Might be upon the way. 



POSTPONEMENT 

When Albert F. McComb 

Died in his native Dodgetown 

At the age of sixty-odd, 

People said — the few who said anything at all — 

That he had lived a futile life, 

And that Europe was to blame: 

His continual hankering after the Old World 

Had made him a failure in the New. 

At seventeen he was reading "In Dickens-Land," 

just out, 
And Ruskin's "Stones of Venice," 
And Maudle's "Life of Raphael"; 
And he was never the same afterward. 
He decided on romance. 

Romance, with Albert, was always a good bit back, 
And some distance away — 
Least of all in booming Dodgetown, 
In the year of grace eighteen-seventy-three. 
There was Shelley poetizing at Pisa 
(Thirty-five years before Albert was born) ; 
And there was Byron with his countess 
In that conspiratorial old palace at Ravenna 
(Four thousand wide miles from Main Street, 
Or more). Et cetera. 

[47] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

At twenty-one Albert "took a position," 

But he never put his heart into the work. 

At twenty-five he might have bought a share in the 
business; 

But, "No," he said, "I may cross over soon; 

Let me be foot-free, and fancy-free — no entangle- 
ments here." 

When he was twenty-six 

Adelaide Waters, tired of waiting. 

Married an ambitious young hardware-dealer. 

And on the whole did well. 

But Albert cared little : 

"She" was waiting on the other side. 

Early he became a boarder, 
And a boarder he continued to be. 
"Why tie myseK up with property?" he asked; 
"The time will come, and I must be without con- 
straint." 

Thus, without constraint, without career, without 

estate. 
Without home and family, 
He waited for the great hour. 
Living on slick steel-engravings. 
And flushed, mendacious chromo-lithographs. 
And ecstatic travel-books penned by forlorn English 

spinsters. 

[48] 



POSTPONEMENT 

In the new West others wooed Fortune and won 

her; 
But Albert was spending fortune on fortune abroad 
Before he had fairly learned to pay his way at home. 
He lived in a palace on the Lung' Arno : 
He saw the yellow river plainly enough 
From the back window of the two-story frame on 

Ninth Street. 
He went to the office in a plum-colored coat. 
Of the cut of the early 'twenties, 
And a voluminous stock — 
Though others might see but "mixed goods'* 
And a four-in-hand. 
Some damsel, prindpessa or contadina. 
Hung on his lips, or carelessly betrayed his heart; 
And.he, the young poet, — 
Though he had never written a line 
(Stuff such as this not yet having been invented), — 
Lay down in dreamless slumber beside Keats, 
Close to the walls of Rome. 

Some years passed by. 

But Albert never budged from home. 

Savings grew slowly; no kindly patron appeared; no 
rich relation died. 

But less and less did Albert live 

In terms of Dodgetown and of Caldwell County. 

It was all Lambeth and Lincoln's Inn and Bridge- 
water House; 

The Schwarzwald and the Forest of Arden; 
f 49 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

The cypresses of Verona, the cascades of Tivoli, 
And the Pincian Hill. 

At forty Albert was getting a lukewarm salary for 

lukewarm work; 
And some small five-and-a-half per-cent investments 
Brought in three hundred and thirty dollars extra 

per annum. 
"In two or three years I shall risk going," he would 

say; 
"And then... !" 

But if Albert stayed single, all his sisters did not; 

And if he himself kept on living, several of his adult 
relatives died; 

And when he was fifty-two a group of grand-nieces 

Asked him to help with their grocery bills. 

And to see that their mortgage-interest got paid on 
time. 

Other things of like nature happened. 

And Albert presently perceived that not every " sin- 
gle" man 

Can escape the obligations and responsibilities of the 
married state. 

"Well, I must wait," he said; 

And he began to collect views of the Dolomites. 

Albert prosed along past sixty. 
As our muse indicated at the start. 
His young relatives grew up, 
\ 50 ] 



POSTPONEMENT 

And some of them married; 

And those who remained single 

Were cared for by their sisters' husbands. 

And one day Albert got word 

That a wealthy cousin, twice removed, 

Who had made millions out of the Michigan forests, 

And had multiplied them into tens of millions on the 

stock exchange. 
And whom he had not heard from for twenty years, 
Had "crossed," as Albert liked to say, 
And had left him a fortune indeed. 

Albert sent for steamship folders; 

But a dubious July 

Was followed by a frenetic August. 

The ancient world, 

So grandiose and so romantic 

To Albert's steadfast eyes. 

Went mad. 

"*Man marks the earth with ruin,'" he mused; 

"But *his control — Stops with the . . . '" 

Yet the sea itself was become a shambles. 

And the realm of faery, beyond, 

A trampled mire of blood and wreckage. 

Albert stood on the brink of things, as ever; 

But the earth heaved beneath his feet, 

And the fabric reared through forty years fell in ruin 

on his head. 
"There will be no peace in my time," he murmured; 
[ 51 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

"Nor any salve in generations. 
For me there is no world at all — 
What is my million, here?" 

Albert retired. 

He studied the stripes in the wall-paper 

And considered his weak old hands on the counter- 
pane. 

His eyes were become too dim to see the Here and 
Now, 

Or to divine the local glories Just About to Be. 

In a negative way he had been a good enough man; 

And, "Heaven will do,'* he sighed; 

"But — has it a Val d'Arno, a Villa d'Este, 

Ora— .?" 

But you, kind friend and reader. 

Shall have the last word here; 

And mind you choose it well. 



POLLY GREENE 

Doublet and hose — 

Such was the disposition 

Of Polly Greene. 

Before her seventh year 

She had clothed mind and soul 

In pants and roundabout. 

As her life went on. 

She slightly changed 

Her masculine habiliments 

To keep in touch 

With current fashions 

And increasing age, 

But thought of going back to petticoats 

Only when 't was too late. 

Tomboy at tender age. 

Hail-fellow-well-met ere twenty. 

She left her native Priceburg, 

After an independent, orageuse career, 

And came to town 

To be a soul more independent still, — 

"One of the boys" indeed. 

Charlie McBride, 
Priceburg's richest youth. 
Who drove a buggy and a pair of bays, 
[ 53 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Proposed before she left; 

But Polly stood him off. 

Art, she thought, would do, at present, 

And do alone. 

At the big school 

She bloused it with the fellows. 

Picked up with eagerness 

Their jargon, slang and blague. 

Tried to make her brush-work 

As "strong" and tough as theirs, — 

Trained with the rabble of resilient males, 

And paid her way from her own purse. 

Proposals followed here — 

Well-meant or ill. 

Polly stood off these new chaps too: 

Dian when she could be. 

And Penthesilea when she must. 

After a while these men — and others — 

Understood; 

While, in the background of the scene — 

And of her mind — 

Was Charles McBride 

To keep her feminine. 

Back home, next summer, in vacation time, 
McBride proposed again. 
Polly was rather pleased. 
But could not "feel" it: 
[ 54 ] 



POLLY GREENE 

After that bunch of pungent masculines 
Charlie seemed tame, insipid. 
He meant well, doubtless; 
He was even flattering; 
But — let the matter lie. 

Presently our Polly, 

As painter. 

Reached consciousness of better things: 

Widened horizon and a brighter light. 

She went to Paris. 

The boys back home were not a patch 

On the wild crew of impudent rapins 

That waited for her there; 

But vi et armis 

Our heroine, 

Virgin and amazon. 

Held even these in check; 

And when she 'd reached 

The very culm and acme 

Of rowdy-dowdyness 

She sent her photo home. 

Charlie McBride proposed by letter. 

"I've kept my charm!" she thought. 

And filed his note away. 

Polly stayed on in Paris. 
Her visage, like her painting. 
Grew hard and "strong"; 
But no new photo found its way 
(55 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Across the deep. 

That first and only one, 

Conned hke a classic 

By her remote adorer, 

Was all. 

In return, he sent his own. 

He 'd given up the buggy for a four-in-hand. 

And showed himself, en cocheVy on the box. 

Yes, Charlie stayed at home, 

A chump, constant but soft. 

Just a provincial fixture: 

Too rich to get a move on. 

Save as he toured through Douglas County, 

And the wide lands 'twixt Danville and Mattoon. 

There was a place, he wrote. 

Beside himself for her. 

"How nice of him!" thought Polly, 

And she packed her traps. 

And went to Egypt, 
Thence to India, 
Painting strange sights and folk. 
Holding her own 
'Gainst all and several. 

And in Bombay she found her first gray hair. 
When she returned to Priceburg there were 
more. 

Times again had changed; 
He met her at the depot 
[ 56 ] 



POLLY GREENE 

In a proud motor-car. 

He saw — but would not see — 

Her graying hair. 

Well, he was older too; 

And as he whizzed her on 

Toward the drear homestead 

Where her parents sat, 

Quite ready for the grave, 

He spoke again. 

She laid her hand on his; 

"Oh, Charlie! this is good of you!" she said; 

"It's like you; you are Kindness' own self." 

Almost in tears. 

She knew 't was he that kept her young, 

And woman still. 

And yet, next month, 

She left the old folks 

To fate's hard chance 

And shaped her course for the Pacific. 

Middle-aged — yes, more — 

But strong and gallant, 

Indefatigable, 

Masterfully alive. 

She drove toward Honolulu : 

Her "art" must enter on another "phase." 

And there, some three months later, 

Came the news: 

"Charlie" McBride was dead. 

157] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

What was she now? 

No woman, 

No longer young; 

He who had kept her such was gone. 

She had cast down the crown of Hfe 

(A coronet of paste, if you prefer). 

And what was left? 

An aged creature indeterminate, 

A mere speck epicene, 

In that vast futile world 

Of sky and sea. 

Well, do you ask an end? 

Must every life have that? 

Consider the existences — so many — 

Which drag and shuffle on. 

Rueful and frustrate . . . 

Here I leave you. 



MANNERS 

Frankly, I hardly know whether 

To choose as my present protagonist 

Michael McGinniss, whose mother 

Called him so fondly, "You, Mickey!" — or 

Robert George Worthington, Junior — 

Robbie or Bobby or Bob, at life's differing stages. 

Both of these names are dactylic. 

Fitting in well with my measure. 

Maybe the second's the better. 

Robert George Worthington, Junior — 

No; I'll begin with the other. 

Mickey McGinniss, dear reader, 

Dirty and noisy and rowdy. 

Son of a home most deplorable. 

Forged more or less for himself and tumbled up 

anyhow. 
Child of the sidewalk and gutter? 
Believe it, my brother! — 
(And sister). Were I rewriting these lines, 
"Sister" should have the first place; for I am a 

feminist. 
If but for the sake of our Robert's nice mother — 
Dear, delicate lady. Returning to Mickey: 

Little of schooling had he; — no "education," 
[ 59 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Whether in sense Anglo-Saxon or Latin. 
Warm-hearted, hot-tempered, quick-fisted, loose- 

tongued — 
Such language in front of his mother and sisters! 
And when he was ten — and that barely — 
They gave him a cap and a telegram. 
Why is it, pray, that those messenger-boys 
All seem so tiny, so stunted.? 
Yes, they're put into long trousers too early. 

All kinds of hours, in all sorts of places ! 
A twelvemonth his term, and it did n't improve him. 
Freed from this life, he grew stalwart and cocky. 
** He'll make his way," said that fond, hopeful 

mother. 
"He will!" said the corner policeman. 

Returning at last 

To Robert George Worthington, Junior: 
"What a nice boy!" exclaimed every lady. 
Always clean hands and clean collars — 
Tho' not yet eleven, dear people ! 
Always so neat and so quiet at table; 
Always got up from his chair when mamma 
Came into the parlor; 

Kept to his books, and kept his books tidy; 
Never went down to the beach with the rabble, 
But tubbed it at home in papa's own tiled bathroom; 
"Yes, sir" and "No, ma'am" to all of the friends of 
the family. 

[60] 



MANNERS 

"Lord!" cried papa's knowing partner. 

In talk with the mother of his, 

"Pity the kid! 

Why, by the time he is twenty, 

Loose in the world, he '11 be a poor little canary. 

Out in a passel of sparrows. 

What they won't do to him!'* 

Quite so, my friends; if a fellow's made soft in his 

non-age. 
Pulpy indeed will he be when he 's thirty. 
Don't teach your growing boy manners — that 

queers him. 

While Robert — or Bob — was at college — 

("Shucks! it will spoil him for business!" 

Exploded that far-seeing partner) — 

Mickey was driving a wagon. 

Handing round butter, eggs, soap and potatoes. 

Set in a rather tough ward was this grocery, 

And a few times a year it served as a polling-place — 

Oh ! but it was tough ! 

(This in the day ere our women folks voted.) 

Mickey became a clerk of election; 
Later, the "cap" of his precinct. 
Bad company? Well, I should say so! — 
Talk of your fist-fights and Billingsgate ! 
Husky and hectoring, 
Mickey would bulldoze the timorous voter. 
Thus, before long, he received from a somebody 
[ 61 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Big and important in city or county 

Wagon and pair and took to political hauling. 

Meanwhile our Robert was moving ahead 

Under the Elms, — making friends, making Bones, 

Making all, through his manners. 

"Our Lady of Lawrance," they called him: 

Cordial, correct. 

Confident, quiet. 

Perfectly straight, but no sissy. 

When he came out from the shade 

His satisfied father carried his influence 

Into the offices (private) of one or two sizable com- 
panies. 

And Robert walked after. 

"The boy is a charmer!" said old Eli Belden, 

The grim and the grimy : 

"Possibly not worth sour apples — 

And yet I will chance him." 

Eli gave him a desk and next day went forth to a 
manicure. 

Our Robert walked on; not quickly, but steadily. 
His talents were fair — by no means remarkable; 
But every one liked him: address, good my mas- 
ters. 

A little past thirty, he felt well-established — 
Assured of success through the rest of his lifetime. 
And then he looked out on the city. 
[62] 



MANNERS 

Dolent, it needed his eye, heaven knows; 

And his hand; and his heart. 

Thirty and three — that's the best age for reformers. 

His eye and his hand both fell on Michael McGinniss, 

Now that most heinous of creatures, 

A political contractor — 

Words that won't march with my rhythm; 

Nor should I want them to do so. 

Nor could mere words paint the things that were doing 

Both in political councils and out in the streets of 
the city. 

Mickey's own work under contract was flagrant; 

Worse were the actions by which he was aiding 

Fraud and corruption to keep up a grip 

On place and on power. 

Young, bold, and loyal — 't was thus that the elders 
appraised him. 

And let him just go the whole limit. 

He profiting little himself. Law caught him red- 
handed. 

And clapped him in jail. Then, bail-bonds not easy; 

The lame duck deserted. Six months in the lock-up. 

That sobered and chastened and just a bit broke him. 

Then, trial; and nothing gained here. 

Save expenses and worry. And then to the lock-up 
(another) 

For good — a matter of lustrums. 

Our college man followed him into the court-room. 
And followed the course of the trial — helped run it. 
[63] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Then, 

Hating the sin, not the sinner, 

Thinking the flail of the law 

Might better have fallen on backs more deserving, 

Robert put on his panoply — 

Cut-away, dog-skins, silk hat, and Malacca — 

And hied him away to the Governor, 

Meaning to ask for indulgence — yes, pardon. 

The Governor, 

Quite the near-gentleman. 

Welcomed him kindly — 

Had met him, in fact, a few times in society. 

Robert, restrainedly cordial, suavely insistent, 

Deferential, yet somehow or other superior. 

Made his impression. 

Those roundabout found him simply astounding. 

It was race; it was blood; it was manners. 

The Governor yielded. 

If he governed a State with a State Board of Pardons, 

He promised his help to make matters go easily.' 

If he governed alone, then he acted alone. 

At any rate, Michael McGinniss got freedom. 

Years passed. (They do, you perceive. 
In all of these pieces.) At forty 
Robert George Worthington rules as sole head 
Of a thundering big corporation. 
Mickey McGinniss is boss of its teaming department, 
And men, in his eyes, are but mules, 
r 64 1 



MANNERS 

The two seldom meet, yet whenever they do so 
It's "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," with Mickey 

McGinniss, 
And he always remembers his hat. 
And so much for manners. 



DEATH OF AUNT JULIANA 

Come, take my hand. 

Together we will go 

Back, back, far back, 

In the dark cave of time; — 

Back to that date, remote, incredible. 

Which saw the birth of Juliana King. 

How long her life ! 

Friends, acquaintances, and relatives - 

The last, especially — 

For years had wondered 

When, if ever, she would die. 

But, after all, let us make pause 

In our recessional. 

The middle 'fifties saw Juliana 

A girl of twenty: 

A vivid, sparkling creature. 

With fire in her dark eyes. 

And energy for ten. 

Jehiel Prince, 

The rugged founder of the house. 
Viewed her at rare intervals 
From under gray, knit brows 
And disapproved: 

[66] 



DEATH OF AUNT JULIANA 

Too much vitality, action, noise — 

A girlish whirlwind. 

And after she had tried, one night, 

To sweep away, Francesca-like, 

On the aer perso with a certain youth. 

And was brought back home. 

With scanty time to spare, 

Jehiel never looked at her at all. 

Live in the house she must, and did, — 

And long 

(The other youths all knew 

And none would take a chance) ; 

But to her sister's husband's father 

She was nought. 

Jehiel, the forceful and the prosperous, 
Slept with his fathers. 
And James reigned in his stead: 
A man who might not add 
To what he had received, 
But who, with sense and caution, 
Was able quite to hold his own; 
A foe to all excesses and extravagance; 
And under him our heroine 
Attained her fortieth year. 
None would have called her even thirty-three. 
The vital sap ran freely 
And hope was beckoning ever. 
On provocation slight, or none, 
"Intentions" filled the void; 
[67] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

And eccentricity began to sketch 

A grotesque mask upon a face once fair. 

Temper developed; 

Rule and reason 

Could set no steadfast bounds; 

And Juliana King 

Became a cross, a trial. 

The family could pay her way, and did; 

But she was "one too many." 

They prompted her to journeys, jaunts, 

Sojourns and visits — 

Ever the same result; 

She came back home 

To the relief of puzzled, harassed friends 

And the affliction of the household all. 

"She'll live too long!" James muttered. 

And — for him — she did. 

She was fifty-odd 

When Raymond took the helm; 

Yet no one would have dared 

To call her forty-four. 

Tingling with life. 

Self-willed and masterful. 

She held her place in house and family 

And faced the young folks down. 

Raymond's generation was indeed the third. 

And he the perfect type of vigor gone to seed 

Forceless and careless. 

f 68 1 



DEATH OF AUNT JULIANA 

The family fortune began to slip away, 

And a young wife of his own kind 

Helped things along. 

Juliana became more than a cross; 

She was a heavy burden. 

Then followed strife 

'Twixt woman young and woman old. 

"Will she live forever.?" cried the vexed Raymond. 

"Send her away!" shouted his furious wife. 

What! — "send her away"? 

Mop back the sea.? Dislodge the polar star? 

Juliana went, 

Called out the family's shame and cruelty among her 

friends, 
Then came back home to roost, a curse indeed. 

When she reached sixty, 

Respite seemed to dawn. 

Imprudence — glaring, even for her — 

Sent her to bed. 

She coughed and burned and shivered; 

And every heart beating in distant rooms 

Secretly hoped — I '11 not say what. 

Doctors came, and nurses; 

Bottles in rows; and poultices; 

And gas-jets burning through the night; 

And household order overthrown. 

Expense piled up. 

With every penny grudged and felt. 

It was the deuce. 

[69] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

"May she but go!'* prayed Raymond in his 

den — 
He who, a child, had hugged his auntie close. 

"Doctors," I said; the plural. 

A second came, for consultation — 

A grizzled bachelor. 

His interest, professional or other, 

Mounted to highest pitch. 

He overrode all bedside etiquette, 

Grappled the problem on his own, 

And after many taxing days and nights 

He pulled the tried soul through. 

In a month she was herself again — 

Indomitable, indestructible. 

Younger than her years. 

And vital as the spring. 

Her friend, some years her junior, — 

Though neither knew, and none would have 

surmised, — 
Looked on and lingered. 
Was it love.? 

Or pity for a slighted — what.? 
(The monosyllable I need eludes me here.) 
Or was it joy in his own miracle? 
What did he see.? 
But, if it comes to that. 
What did you see.? ♦ 

There are eyes for all. 

\ 70 1 



DEATH OF AUNT JULIANA 

In fine, they married. 
Wife, now, and idol — 
What you will — 
Revived, triumphant. 
Her day had come. 
She could motor past 
Her nephew's house — 
A lesser house than once — 
Scorning both it and him. 

And when she died . . . ? you ask? 
Died.? Died nothing! 
0^ She 's living yet. 



CHARM 

The aura 

Of Gerald Jean La Croix 

Was delicate, perhaps, 

Yet dense and pungent and pervasive. 

It affected men in one way, 

And women in another. 

The average male would soon protest, 

"This is too thick!" 

Or cry, "Oh, give me air!" and 

Go. 

The other sex, however, would bask in Grerald's 

emanations. 
As if wrapped and rocked 
In the languorous luxuriance of a conservatory 
Where narcissi bloomed. 
At twenty-four Gerald possessed 
Plump hands, moist eyes, locks the reverse of dry. 
And, despite his gentleness. 
An obvious overplus of health. 
No woman quite escaped: least of all, Letitia 

Baynes. 

Perhaps old Jasper Baynes himself 

Knew for what he was piling up that money — 

and for whom: 
Perhaps not. In either case 

f 72 1 



n 



CHARM 

He went on doggedly, automatically, 
Year after year — some forty of them — 
Putting dollar to dollar. 

He must have had a plan, an object, a reason, don't 
you think? 

Yet some hint as to the ultimate destination of accu- 
mulated wealth 

Might have come to him from so common an object 
as a beehive; 

Or an example of disinterested toil for others 

From certain clever workers in his own factory, 

Who, dowered with inventiveness. 

Seemed willing to place their gifts and skill 

At the disposal of the "business," 

Profiting its proprietor notably. 

Themselves not one iota. 

But instead of mulling over analogies, 
Jasper died abruptly — just like that! — 
Leaving a few hundred thousand dollars 
To a young wife 

Whom, after a long period of bachelorhood, 
He'd married but a year before. 

The captious said of Gerald, later, 
Beginning with his name — 
But here I '11 pause to register the surmise 
That few of them could have accomplished, 
On the basis of mere personal charm, 
[ 73 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

A hundredth part of that which he achieved so 

readily. 
Yes, they said his real cognomen 
Was as prosaic as you please — 
That he had taken his present one 
From some Canadian uncle, 
And then arranged the rest to suit; 
That he had begun life at Bay City or Saginaw 
Among the buttoned boots and kid slippers of a shoe 

store; 
That, when he first came to town, 
He dabbled behind a counter in haberdashery; 
That his employer, in his own family's absence abroad, 
Had taken the lad for a summer fortnight 
To tonic Charlevoix, 
Putting him forth as a protege, 
Or even in the light of an adopted son. 
At all events, it was high up 
In the clear and breezy North, 
When he was sporting spaciously and showily 
In August wantonness. 
That Letitia Baynes, 
Young widow of three months. 
First met him. 

In every aspect, mood and gesture 
He spoke compellingly for himself — and her; 
While, as for the gossip. 
That (howsoever timed or tuned) 
Never once reached her ears. 

[74] 



CHARM 

He was a bright and florid blossom 

Swaying, long-stemmed, like an oriflamme, 

In breezes of sufficient fiscal force. 

And casting carelessly on that crisp northern 

air 
Odorous addresses which fully served — and more — 
To draw the various butterflies 
That fluttered round about in the usual mid-summer 

mood; 
Letitia first and foremost. 
He won her; it was for him 
Q That Jasper Baynes had moiled till sixty-one. 

Next winter to Palm Beach : 

Instinctively he knew his own. 

On the way down, or back, his wife — 

But let me ponder: Can people conveniently 

Fall from the platforms of observation-cars? 

Not with plausibility complete. 

They may slip better from the smooth after-decks 

Of yachts that sail, by moonlight, 

Through languid, Southern, February seas. 

Well, anyhow, when Gerald Jean La Croix 

Came North again, he was a widower of twenty- 
five. 

Not over-clouded by appropriate sadness; 

And (despite the claims of certain relatives by mar- 
riage) 

He was wealthy. 

[75] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

But "north" is a most comprehensive word, 
Including scenes more vibrant, rich, rewarding — to 

some — 
Than any that are offered by the Middle West. 
Our Gerald had a native instinct and aflBnity 
For the swell and the exclusive (lovely words !) 
And the "best"; 

And now, at last, he had the fullest means 
To gratify his longings. 
In the South he had known how to make a hundred 

thousand tell 
Among a hundred millions; 
And in the East he took up several threads 
Whose spinning had been begun elsewhere. 
These various threads ran with marked directness 
From Floridian sands to New England rocks: 
The "guests" came back, just like the "hosts" and 

waiters. 
One of these threads tied, in due course 
(Speaking in terms of poesy and compliment), 
A lovers' knot. 

Our Gerald's personal emanations were as eflScacious 
Among the coves and reefs of Maine as elsewhere. 
In another year he was again a husband — 
A second widow. 

His first wife had been three years his senior; 
This new one was thirteen. 
The first was merely well-to-do; 
The second had her million. 
[76] 



CHARM 

Bought by each : 

They had appreciated — so had he. 

And besides, the new mate was own aunt 

To a young thing whose mother's fortune. 

Preposterously swelled by marriage, by bequests, 

By boundless yieldings from Pennsylvanian mines, 

And by Olympian accumulations outside all common 

rule, 
Had made her consort 
To a pseudo-claimant to a pseudo-throne 
In one of Europe's most obscure and distant corners: 
America, land of Opportunity! 
In such a milieu (or on its edge). 
And subject most peculiarly 
To all its influences and its temptations. 
Stood Gerald Jean at thirty — stands to-day. 

Does anybody feel like trying 
To finish out his life-course for him, 
Giving him thirty years more? 
/ don't; yet one may ask how much is to be hoped 
For — or from — an article of purchase and of sale 
*Mongst women all his elders; 
Or may wonder how much of comfort or of joy 
He, guarded close through years still good. 
From depredations on Hesperidian fruits 
By dragon worldly-wise and vigilant. 
Will ever reach; 

Or might be prompted to inquire 
How much of manly ambition, 
[77] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Or how much urge toward some real social service. 
Is likely to survive the consciousness of the fatal 

page 
In that red, dumpy little tome. 
The Almanach de Gotha. 

What remains? 

An aging Prospero who waves his wand 

To rule cravats and socks, 

To call forth exquisite dinners. 

To order picnics, far too elegant. 

On rocks or sands 

(In either case they'll soon be washed away). 

And then, at sixty, from ladies young and old. 

These verbal tributes: 

"How well he holds his years!" 

"He had a most romantic youth, they say!*' 

"Who can resist 

Such magnetism and such charm?" 

PJuil let's pass to something else. 



WHISPERINGS 

Mists, roll aside! 
Disclose the girlhood days 
Of her, our pythoness, 
Celestine Mudge. 
Sun, shed your rays 
Upon the gifted child 
Of Ormuz and of Ind. — 
("Ind." — short for Indiana); — 
Ormuz, abode of whisperings, 
"Controls" and leadership. 
The Hoosier Domremy. 

From sixteen on 

Our over-dowered girl 

Was subject 

To addresses and solicitations 

From out the empty air. 

A pressing crew surrounded her. 

Refused the other life 

For the concerns of this, 

And showered on her their messages 

Fatuous, malapropos, importunate. 

The chief of these. 
Professor Pike 
(Deceased in *eighty-j5ve), 
[ 79 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

A kindly and benevolent old man 

Ready with counsel and fecund of advice, 

Would try to stand the others off; 

Yet often did this rabble rout 

Break through his guard . . . 

Oh, 't is vexatious 

To have some ancient Roman 

Whisper across your ironing-board. 

Or some lost cousin 

Sizzle from the pies 

When cookstove door 's thrown open. 

Or Indian chieftains 

Grunt about your pillow 

In the dark middle of the night. 

But all these things, and more, 

Celestine must endure for years. 

She married; but her husband — 

Oh, he just went away. 

She lived along alone with her one child. 

The townsfolk sniggered as they passed the house. 

And boys and girls at school 

Made life for little Nan one misery. 

Ormuz, how could you ! 

Visitors came. Yielding to their demands, 
Celestine learned a set of parlor tricks. 
She — or her familiars — 

Wrote names in tight-closed books on distant 
shelves, 

[80] 



WHISPERINGS 

Passed checkers through a shut backgammon . 

board, 
And sent from cones word of the long-since dead; 
A scanty Hving, and a dubious. 

And last came Dora Dale, 

Silly and rich and more than middle-aged; 

Not bereft, precisely, 

But looking for an interest. 

The two were intimates in no time; 

And then, before so very long. 

The three of them, 

Celestine, Dora and Professor Pike, 

Set out upon the conquest of the world. 

Dora loved the Professor from the start; 

His genial wisdom and loquacity 

Held her in thrall. 

She saw him as the climax of the ages 

And sat her down to tell the world that fact. 

Her book, as sketched, began 
With a brief glimpse of Brahmin sages; 
Then came the Greek philosophers. 
Then Rome's wide empire, 
Then Augustine in Anglia, 
The Reformation, 
The Pilgrim Fathers, 
The Continental Congress, 
The Winning of the West, 
[81 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Old Tippecanoe, 

And Ormuz on the Wabash, 

Professor Pike in Ormuz . . . ' 

You see the chain. 

The apex of mentality, 

The crux of human fate, 

The reading of earth's riddle, 

All centered and all settled here in Ormuz, 

Yet Ormuz nudged and giggled 

And looked for the solution 

Elsewhither. Oh! 

Know you, blind village, 

That revelations and phenomena 

Must take place somewhere. 

Why this spot any less than that? 

Wisdom is one; the world a unit. 

Wonders may have their home on any threshold 

(Or, if you live in an apartment, 

On the back porch). 

Each man, each woman, is a miracle. 

The crown, the cap, the climax of the race 

(This gives us all a chance) — 

The home and haunt of mystery. . . , 

But Ormuz looked afar: 

To N. Y., or even farther yet. 

And so Celestine — do you wonder? — 
Packed up her things and made the great refusal. 
She, with Dora and Professor Pike, 
[ 82 1 



WHISPERINGS 

Wiped off the clay of Ormuz 

And went to Indianapolis. 

Here they called spirits from the vasty deep; 

Here Dora started on her book. 

This city showed more interest. 

But none too much; 

And in the fall the three went East. 

Manhattan gave them foothold 

And a small section 

Of its wide, noise-crammed ear. 

They listened too (while finishing the book) : 

They began to hear from Paris 

Of plain George Mullins, 

From Ottumwa, Iowa, 

Who had rigged up a cabinet. 

There in the Rue de Seine, 

And set the town a-tingle. 

"Our way lies o'er the sea," said Dora; 

"On to London!" 

Celestine now had gained 
Aspect and manners urban. 
And yet had kept 
Her semi-rustic, sweet sincerity; 
And as for round-eyed little Nan, 
She was an utter darling. 
Dora, with experience and aplomb for three 
(Or four, counting the Professor), 
And purse for twenty. 
And letters to the social powers 
[83 J 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Of Babylon . . . 

Yes, they soon made good: 

Countesses and Oxford dons 

Thronged their hotel for sittings; 

And in a fortnight they were quite the rage. 

London, how could you! 
You, with your myriad teachers, preachers. 
Organs and vehicles, — 
I don't mean street-pianos, — 
You, too, must quest for the remote, 
Must hanker for the Elsewhere, 
Hone for the Something-Other ! 
Must you, too, be told 
That man 's a wonder in all places. 
That miracles may crop out anywhere — 
In Goswell Road as readily 
As on Fourth Street in Ormuz? 
That thwarted sibyls doubtless dwell 
In Shoreditch and in Clapham? 
That smothered oracles might speak 
Out through the smoke of Southwark? 
And if you say the still small voice 
Shall come best from the still small town. 
What quieter spots than some that lurk 
Within the heart of a metropolis? 
Take, for example, 
A suite upon the twentieth floor 
Of a well-kept hotel — 
Such a one, in fact, as our Celestine, 
[84] 



WHISPERINGS 

Back in her native land, now occupies. 

High above the mists, close to the stars. 

She lives, well-dressed, well-fed, well-thought-of. 

With little Nan 

At a nice boarding-school . . . 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 



ALONZO GROUT 

He "found himself" 

When on the threshold of sixteen. 

While the townspeople 

Still called him "Lonnie." 

He jotted down some lines, 

Looked in the glass, 

And saw a poet. 

His first things were "occasional." 

He crowned his head with gray 

To celebrate a golden wedding; 

And Grandma Betts, 

Who felt that she was even older, 

Reached up and gave the blushing lad a kiss. 

Next year he was a patriot of the early days. 

Hymning the town's chief glory — 

That fortunate woman 

Who had become 

Vice-president of the Colonial Dames : 

"He will go far!" breathed the dry spinster 

Who ruled the public library's twelve hundred books. 

Alonzo presently discovered 

The universe of nature and of art: 

Stars, rills, fate, rondeaux, Shelley, and the rest. 

Gaining in knack and subjectivity. 



ALONZO GROUT 

The Baptist minister laid his hand 

Upon our hero's shoulder; 

But as concerned the men and boys in general — 

Well, never mind. 

And thus to twenty-three. 

The more censorious among the neighbors 

Now grew impatient : 

Lonnie, they felt, — yes, he was "Lonnie" yet, — 

Had shown his "gift" — and more than shown it; 

Let him come down to life's realities. 

In Lonnie's set they married early 

And put a firm young shoulder to the wheel. 

However, Alonzo Grout chose his own course: 

He made a volume, 

Sought the market, 

And stood a published poet. 

Then "general hterary work'* 

Took him to town 

And steadied him the while he served 

As page, as acolyte, as Ganymede 

(He felt himself all three) 

Unto the Muse. 

He tried all forms, 

From sonnet to chant-royal. 

He did a tragedy — 

Oh, it out-Cenci'd Cenci! 

And he did masques — 

Things more Jacobean 

[87] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Than James himself (James First), 

Or Jonson, either. 

He even printed in the magazines! 

And so he single-footed it along. 

Luxuriating in his Self 

And in his self-expression. 

The reading public, 

Comprising about three hundred and seventy-five 

people, several critics included, 
Cried, "A wonder!" 

Thus for some seasons — 

Increasing "output" and increasing fame; 

Clubs of a special kind enrolled him; 

He read, and rather widely, his own verse. 

And then, within the limits of a year. 

His vein pinched out. 

Pick as he might, no ore shone to his view; 

And so — 

One day he shut up his Sahara-desk 
And took the trolley to a suburb. 
Where he was minded to consult 
An eminent specialist, so to speak: 
A man whose blood showed various mingled strains 
And who had penned, in more languages than one. 
Many conspicuous things in prose and verse; 
And everybody said of him 
That he was kind to "younger men." 
[ 88 1 



ALONZO GROUT 

He rose from his indefatigable machine 

And looked Alonzo over with a friendly care. 

"Are you American?" he asked. 

"On both sides, yes," Alonzo proudly said — 

"For generations." 

The sage and genius sadly shook his head. 

"My boy, 

I fear your case is hopeless. 

Like others of your blood. 

You have mistaken: 

You thought yourself a spring, when but a tank. 

You ' ve dipped yourself quite empty, 

And there's no source'' — 

He gave the word a Gallic twist — 

"To feed you and replenish." 

Then he spoke at length 

Of the native mind and soul — 

Its soil and its topography: 

A watershed without the proper pitch; 

A soil light, shallow, friable, 

Fit for sparse shrubs, perhaps. 

But not for secular oaks; 

No deep and cavernous reservoirs. 

Spring-fed, 

From which great streams might issue; 

Scant descent 

Of certain blessed dews of heaven 

Through an arid atmosphere 

Upon an earth too lean. 

f 89 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

From our native stock 

He looked for little, 

In any of the arts. 

The great things, he believed, 

Were to be wrought by other, newer blood. 

He walked with our poor boy to the front door. 

"Have you tried — essays?" 

Alonzo glowered and made his get-away. 

So, then! Up in the air at thirty-three! 

I am not one to say 

That anybody's life — 

No matter how mistakenly begun 

Or how mistakenly conducted — 

Is finished by that date; 

Not at all. By no means. Point du tout. 

But — for an artist ! Well, it 's serious. 

Alonzo could not leave the life. 

Even the printing part of it — 

Galleys and formats, eight-point and flubdubs. 

The very smell of ink — 

Entranced him. 

If he might no longer 

Wield poet's pen, 

He could at least proof-read 

Verse writ by others — 

And do it well: 

For the fine frenzy 

[90] 



ALONZO GROUT 

Often took but little heed 
Of indentations and of semicolons — 
Or even of spelling. 
Thus he faced the situation 
And set his feet upon the lesser way. 
It was still possible 
To live vicarious raptures — 
Putting delight in dashes. 
Passion within parentheses, 
And reels of dubiousness in rows of dots. 
Like this: 
• ••••••••• 

Thus he laid hands on his new task: 

Greeting the bright young foreigners 

He could not rival, and hoping 

(Against hope, sometimes) 

That they would sing no less decorously than he, 

Nor chant with voice too strident 

Their rowdy rhythms for a rowdy day; 

Living at second-hand in fonts of type; 

Drudging enthusiastically 

That other souls might scintillate; 

Doing his simple tricks, poor Jongleur, 

Before Our Lady's shrine; 

And scarce suspecting 

Behind the future's veil 

The sad, repellent days 

That were to bring 

(And bring so soon) 

Vers libre. 



VICTORY 

She was jilted ! The whole little town 
Was smiling and wagging its tongue 
Over her ! 

In her own narrow world 
She had queened it for years, 
With hot temper, proud heart, and high hand. 
And to-day ! 
In the eyes of them all 
She was humbled, dethroned. 

How they flocked, how they gibed her, to even old 
scores ! 

All her being, outraged and inflamed. 

Felt one need, one alone: 

She must marry, and that without wait; 

And her husband must be 

One more rich, and more comely, more highly- 
considered 

Than he who had left her. 

She was wedded — a whirlwind ! — in less than a 
fortnight; 

Then, panting and dazed, 

She steadied herself in the doorway of marriage 

To ask where she stood. 

In a sense she had won; 
She had snatched from disgrace 
[ 92] 



I <^ 



VICTORY 

A magnificent triumph — 

If you scanned it not closely. 

He was handsome and popular, wealthy and 

young. 
In the choice of a wife he had had his full chance: 
In his day he himself had been called 
A sad flirt and a jilt. 

Shall I brighten his splendor by adding to this 
That his father was rated the town's leading banker? 
You're impressed, I can see. 
(There was only one other.) 

Now, the son of a town's leading banker 
Is likely as not, if he lingers at home, 
To be far from a pattern of grace; 
And Victoria Drake (yes, I '11 give her a name) 
Was not long on her way to discover this fact. 
All his faults — and he had them in scores — 
Rather grew than diminished; 
And their chief and their climax was this: 
He felt that he 'd done her a favor. He had. 
Hence a margin for stragglings and strollings out- 
side — 
He began to philander, to roam. 
There's no need for a close resume 
Of numbers and ages and names. 
There was smoke. As for fire. 
It was not to be clearly detected. 
But a certain proud heart and imperious temper 
Took counsel of silence and learned self-control. 
[ 93 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

In the course of some years — four or five — 

The head of that bank passed away, and the son 

Had his freedom — to show his own hand 

And to pick his own paths. 

For the first time in hfe he was now in the lead. 

With no other to counsel and guide. 

His success was but fair; he'd been leaning too long. 

"Take in sail!" — 

Was the word, for the home, from a helmsman 

unskilled; 
And a certain high heart and a certain high hand 
\\ Made a drop to a commoner level. 

She was thirty and more. 

In her bosom there burned all the earlier fire — 

All its pride, all its power, all its scorn. 

And a temper to wither and sear. 

But this fierce flame of life — 

To what use should she put it? 

All this energy, hot and intense — 

On what object bestow it? 

No pride in her husband; no pride in her home. 

And her children, poor flock. 

Into plain little dullards they threatened to grow. 

All her world seemed to droop, to collapse: must that 

be? 
She cried out for esteem, for regard, for success. 
These must come; she must bring them. 
For herself, for her home. 
For her family circle, her place in the town, 
[94] 



VICTORY 

For her husband, poor weakling and stray. 

She would conquer respect. 

A ^volcano for rage and for anger, for fire and for 

heat, 
She would make herself into a hearthstone of cheer — 
A center of comfort and good and well-being 
For one and for all : 

No mountain of pride and of wrath, hurling forth 
Hot ashes and lava to burn and to blight; 
But a well-beloved chimney, whose plumed smoke 

and sparks 
Should assemble and group round the fireplace below 
All the best within reach. 

She would focus just there the full worth of the town; 
She would benefit others and profit herself. 
She would send up a cloud of good deeds and good 

cheer. 
Gain respect as a wife and success as a mother. 
Those dullards, all four — 
In the end they should yield her both credit and joy. 

In the course of the years her daughters and sons. 
Who had met her ideals, fulfilled her desires. 
Made homes for themselves. 

And they left her, as young ones have done oft before, 
With regrets not undue, nor too lasting. Her 

husband, 
Now slothful and dim (his best days had come first). 
Attained to decorum if not to esteem; 
But he never reached any true sense of her worth. 
[95 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Though 't was felt, should she die, he would marry 

too soon, 
He enjoyed, on the whole, the respect of the town. 

She was now "Grandma" Drake, 

The town's focus and hub. 

The column, the prop, the mainstay of all. 

The community's interests centered in her. 

As adviser and friend of both greater and less. 

She welcomed new babies, her grandsons included. 

And half the girl-babies were christened Victoria. 

On her fast-graying temples her triumph shone clear; 

From her eyes, dark and vivid, her victory flashed. 

Yes, she gained her reward. 

How would you, sir or madam, take yours? 

In a small daily dribble of comfort and pleasure, 

Or all in one sum, great and noble and fine, 

Well along toward the end? 

Choose your plan; pick your size. 



INTERLUDE 

(For Preparedness — June, 1916) 

When he was eight years old, 

His father, whom he had almost forgot. 

Came back, 

Hung up a dusty cap and battered sword 

Upon the best-room's wall 

And, after three long years, 

Resumed the daily round of peace. 

When he was sixty-two or so, 

War loomed again. 

With late, dull eyes he visioned it 

Plunging across the sea. 

Stalking through city streets. 

And desecrating homes 

In town and country both. 

Half a century of peace 
And of prosperity 
Closed with a thunderclap: 
His half -century. 
His interlude. 

When has this poor, racked world 
Seen just its like? 
For a whole people 
Remote, secure, heedless, and busy, 
[ 97 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

The fond, the foolish days moved on. 
And no one seemed to understand 
How Httle, or how much, they meant. 

Through all this time 

The great world roundabout 

Had heaved and swelled, 

A sad, uneasy flood; 

And now and then some small spent wave 

Came hitherward. 

Asia, a third world, slept indeed, 

Locked up in her unreckoned chamber; 

But, toward the east, kings troubled somewhat — 

And somewhat entertained: 

That is, vexed one another and their own. 

And interested us, if slightly. 

"They're lasting still," we said. 

"How weak and foolish are those Old- World ways: 

We are better here." 

Our boy's own little world — 
If world you '11 call it — 
Lay open wide. 
Divinely young and simple. 
With candid opportunity for all : 
No crowd, no fierce competing, and no tyranny. 
Suicide was rare; child-suicide unheard-of; 
And if the fair occasion failed at home, 
Hope ever beckoned 
From wider, richer realms beyond. 
[98^] 



INTERLUDE 

Our boy at fourteen made his start in life 

Under a friend of his own father; 

No horde of banded foreigners opposed. 

His work got welcome and reward : 

A daily wage small, true, 

Yet fit for daily needs, enough for self-respect. 

Later, on manhood's verge, 

He moved along 

Toward the grand new spaces of the West. 

Here success, prosperity, 

Came almost unsolicited. 

Nothing too good for him: 

He took the best for granted. 

Sometimes, wafted across from wornout lands, 

Came distant echoings that seemed to tell 

Of poverty and hardship and oppression. 

The victims, too, began to come. 

In numbers less or greater. 

"They'll be better here," he negligently said. 

"But why," he asked, incredulous, 

" Should any one who really deserves 

Be poor or suffer in a world like ours?" 

At thirty-five he had a fortune. 
And doubled back to make it greater. 
A vast new wilderness had been exploited; 
Cities had been reared 
In ugliness and in corruption. 
[99] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

But the corrupt and hideous 

Were Httle to his sense — 

Mere incidentals. 

They would pass; if not, 

They counted with a force but slight 

Against the general gain. 

A great people must be allowed 

Its minor faults — spots on the sun. 

Ten years later — 

Various other fortunes lost and won — 

He took his family abroad. 

With smiling tolerance 

He saw the pomp of kings. 

And with pleased interest 

The paradings of their armies. 

The world of Europe 

Was but a stage decor. 

"How it must cost!" he said. 

"Well, let it! 

So much the worse for them. 

And so much the better'* — 

He spoke prophetically — 

"For us." 

And in the Orient 
He condescended to be pleased 
With curios from Peking, 
And with the charming life, in miniature. 
Of Nippon. He brought home 
[ 100 1 



INTERLUDE 

Lacquers and prints from Tokio, 

And friends applauded his exotic tastes. 

These people of the East. 

He'd met already in our own new West. 

There, they seemed misplaced, 

And possibly too numerous. 

Here, in their proper setting. 

They were "so dear," his daughters said. 

"Smart little beggars!" he himself observed. 

When he was nearing sixty, 

That outside world (on either side). 

That spectacle, that double pleasure-ground. 

That thing apart. 

Heaved in a general agony. 

He, barricaded 'midst his stocks and bonds, 

Felt inconvenience, then annoyance. 

Then almost distress. 

Until he found a way, 

Aided by those who would be "better here," 

To put dread weapons into warring hands 

And profit into his own pockets. 

This reconciled him, in a measure. 

To all the folly, passion, and imprudence 

Upon the outskirts. 

Rich himself. 

He was impatient with the needy; 
Self -controlled. 

He scorned the rash and reckless. 
[ 101 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

But the big world was poor and mad. 
It looked about with hungry, angry eyes. 
And saw our friend so rich and so unguarded; 
It taxed him, too, with his offense. 
He remained almost indifferent — 
Self-confidence had been so long his normal state; 
And cleverness, garnered from a varied experience 
In new environments, had bred 
\ A ready knack and gumption, equal quite 
Y \ To any labored, plodding, trained efficiency. 

It was still inconceivable 

That the thrice-holy ritual 

Of dollar-snatching 

Should suffer serious check — 

We were a business people. 

And yet the break was here; 

The flood had come upon him. 

His happy, busy, prosperous life 

Felt a sad jar 

As rude, contemptuous hands 

Seized on its big, frail frame 

And swept across its strings in discord. . . . 

Fifty-odd years of poor provinciality. 

Lived by one who had assumed himself to be 

(Through confidence — and through self-confidence 

— misplaced) 
Close to the great world's hub and center. 
Yet safe from its alarums. 

[ 102 ] 



^ r- 



mTERLUDE 

In truth, 

Is not mere money-getting but a special gift 

Of an inferior order? 

The world has other gifts, and other needs — 

And other elements more vital and diverse, 

To raise themselves and dominate our friend 

And his poor fortune. 



THE STATUE 

The wedded life 

Of Mr. and Mrs. Harvey D. Mason 

Was ideal — 

Had been for thirty years. 

Everybody said so, 

And everybody was right. 

The home life 

Of the Jackson-Hurds 

Was perfect, too — 

Had been for thirty years and five. 

Everybody said so. 

And everybody was right. 

Yet Misery may issue 

From the graceful loins of Perfection. 

I say so, 

And I am right. 

Shall our protagonist be Ella Mason, 

Aged twenty-two. 

Or Roland Hurd, 

Aged twenty-six? 

I may give each a chance; 

But, for the present. 

Place aux dames. 

To Ella, simple maid. 

As to the twenty thousand good folk of the town, 
[ 104 1 



THE STATUE 

The wedded years 

Of her thrice-worthy parents 

Spoke the last word for pure Monogamy; 

Nor were the Hurds so far behind. 

Before the whole community 

These couples twain 

Reared jointly in the public square 

The towering statue of a grand Ideal, 

Built in enduring bronze. 

Lettered on its inexorable base 

Stood forth these words: 

"One flesh, one spirit." 

The giant figure, like a newer Moloch, 

Held forth its arms, as if to say: 

"Offer your children here, 

And see what happens.'* 

What one good pair (or two) have done, 

This model monster said. 

The whole wide world 

Can do, and must, and shall. 

"Yea!" cried the echoing public. 

Yet if it's all so simple and so common, 

Why lay such stress and lavish so much praise 

On that which is confessed to be 

The glittering exception? 

Our heroine felt sure that she. 
The child of such progenitors, 
And Roland, scion of a family 
[ 105 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

No less correct, 

Would meet triumphantly, with utter ease, 
The Statue's most exact demands. 
Why not, with such examples set 
Before their youthful eyes? 

Roland had told her (no unusual gambit) 
'T was her fair face had drawn him. 
She, in response, had smiled and bridled; 
And thus the game was on. And yet . . . 
Does beauty grow with the increasing years? 
Not often. 

Do spiritual graces come to take the place 
Of graces merely fleshly? 
Not always. 

Will even use-and-wont control the helm 
When other things are lacking? 
Not inevitably. 

And yet, before the game had far advanced, 
Ella had said to Roland (and herself). 
In substance, if not in measured syllables: 
**/ will be your Hfe's banquet — 
Your feast from start to finish: 
Hors-d'oeuvres, potage, 
Poisson, entree ..." 
And so on, down — 
Down to the last sip of coffee, 
To the last crumb of cheese. 
Consider, friends. 
Think what it means to say: 
[ 106 ] 



THE STATUE 

"I only, I alone, shall suffice for sustenance, 
For entertainment and for comfort 
Through all your years of life!'* 
What shall we call the mental state 
That puts forth such colossal claim? 
Fatuity, naivete, conceit, 
Self-confidence and self-complacency. 
All five raised to the n^^ degree? 
7 • Yet such was Ella's stand. 

Roland bowed before the Statue 

And undertook the ritual, 

Though with certain doubts. 

Child of the newer day, — 

The richer life. 

No great time elapsed 

Before he looked upon the brazen god 

And almost shuddered. 

"One flesh, one spirit!" 

He felt himself to be — himself. 

Reluctant and recalcitrant to fuse. 

And as time went on 

He found that, in good truth, 

He had a fickle palate. 

And that his eyes. 

Those of a roving aesthete. 

Would feed with relish 

On all the beauties of the world. 

He had his business and his business cares; 
He had his home — a better, it may be, 
[ 107] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Than he deserved; 

He had his children, and was in several ways 
A satisfactory parent; yet — 
/ Man*s still imperfectly monogamous, 
And he was very man. 

I shall not tell much more. 

Ella was doubtless limited 

(Yes, ladies, many of you are) : 

No flowing fount of rich variety. 

Life's friction fretted her. 

And the fret showed in face and temper. 

Some other face, or faces. 

Kept, perhaps, more fair; 

And other tempers, it may be, 

Were found more soothing. 

We may surmise some years 

Of bickering, suspicion. 

Protest, indignation. 

Harvey D. Mason may have shown his ire. 

And even have led his daughter into court. 

A thousand tongues may well have wagged to say: 

"What! this from L. T. Jackson-Hurd's own son!" 

All that I know for certainty is here: 

That once, and more than once, 
Roland J. Hurd, in dead of night, 
Went to the public square 
And cursed the Statue — 
Yes, he cursed it roundly. 

[ 108] 



THE STATUE 

And as he cursed 

He thought of a more Hberal life. 

In his brain, if not upon his Hps, 

Were justifying analogues 

From human life in other lands. 

And even from dumb nature. 

He saw the Moslem world, 

Approving Turk and Arab. 

Cock-crow brought him another argument, 

With images of docile and adoring hens. 

He even may have thought of Utah. 

Still young, and eager and appreciative. 

He shook his fist at the bronze figure, crying: 

"Must each and all invariably conform? 

Because one marriage in a hundred 

Reaches and realizes the high ideal set, 

Must nine and ninety more 

Strive to come square with the Impossible, 

And lapse away to failure and distress?" 

He spoke at length, and with great fluency. But 

"Peace," said the Statue; 
"Peace — and patience. 
I'm but the working-rule of By-and-Large,' 
The loose-geared law of the Approximate. 
I cannot give detailed regard 
To every individual case. 
You demand too much. 
A man like you might even ask 
f 109 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

In this our world 

For Justice or Content! 

You are not here for pleasure. 

But for discipline. 

Do the best you can; 

Time 's on your side. 

Reward — if you succeed — 

Is elsewhere, possibly. 

Go. Go home." 



THE "ART OF LIFE" 

Befo:re Horace Tripp had been married 
A year and a half 
He began to suspect 
That the "art of Hfe" — 
As he handsomely called it — 
Was rather beyond his technique; 
His powers in sleight-of-hand 
Were slight indeed. 
Too many balls to keep in the air: 
His wife, his baby, his grocer. 
His landlord, his publisher. 
His friends and enemies. 
And all the rest of them. 
He made many a sad slip. 
And came to feel petulantly 
That perhaps he was more or less 
A A dub. 

So he bent himself over his desk 

All the harder. 

If he could not coordinate and control 

The various people who made up 

The elements of his daily existence, 

All the more would he take a high hand 

[111] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

With the brain-folk 

Who peopled his books. 

These had to behave — 

Had to do as he wanted. 

Sometimes they dashed through adventures. 

Calamities and contortions 

In kingdoms remote and imaginary; 

Sometimes they grubbed in the slums; 

Again, they were clever and elegant criminals 

In "society" — whatever the mode of the hour. 

But, anyhow, 

All jumped through the hoop. 

At his lightest command; 

And each work came out in the end 

Just as the author had planned it, — 

No bit in the teeth, and no balking. 

'T is the weak man, of course. 

Who makes the best tyrant; 

And Horace was ruthless. 

Soon he came to look on himself 

As a species of minor creator. 

Grandiose and omnipotent, 

In a world of his own. 

It was not, however, the world 
With which one perforce 
Has everyday dealings. 
Things listed and twisted. 
His publisher carped — 
Returns for them both became meager; 
[ 112 ] 



THE "ART OF LIFE" 

And his father-in-law 

Began to scowl his reproaches; 

And all the next summer 

Bettina, with little indifferent Wilfrid, 

Spent at her parents' cool cottage 

High in the pine woods of Michigan, 

While Horace, left quite behind. 

Just boarded. Next year 

He gave up a flat; — 

The butcher had shown some impatience; 

His wife was now dressed by her mother; 

Pew-rent and club-dues were far in arrears; 

So the three went to live 

Under the roof and the eyes of the elders. 

Who looked with great coldness 

On what they called "scribbling," 

And begged him to drop it 

For something more useful — 

And profitable. 

But Horace, he said, was an "artist." 
Trained to his one line of work, 
Stubborn and proud, 
He declared that a man 
Who could scheme an elaborate novel, 
Shape it, slew it around, 
And push it through to a suitable climax. 
Was a deal of a chap, after all. 
He heartily scorned 
Those "real-estate operations" 
[ 113 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

On commissions from which 

He and Bettina and Wilfrid 

Were now kept a-going. 

What need to put art into one's daily life 

And its manifold problems? 

No; he would place it high and dry 

In vacuo. 

In a row of symmetrical, well-finished novels, 

Set in due order on the towering Shelves 

Of ImmortaHty. 

Another lean year. His writings 
Seemed to fall in with the whims of the day 
Less than ever. 
He was a humbug; the public, 
Not knowing the fact, and yet feeling it some- 
how, 
Gave him the go-by. 
Bettina now added her prayers 
To her parents' reproaches. 
And Horace, a martyr, 
"Gave up literature" — in a measure. 
Drugging his deadly aversion 
To business, 
He found him a place 
With his publisher, — 
Yes, with his own; 
For he had knack of a kind 
That gave him a limited value 
In certain practical fields : 
f 114 1 



THE "ART OF LIFE" 

He could proof-read and edit. 
He became, then, a salaried cog 
In a big and a busy machine. 

His new chief had begun 

As a publisher of wall-paper. 

Uttering fields, friezes and dadoes. 

Next he had added stationery; 

Next, books and periodicals; 

And now he was bringing out sparsely, each 

season, 
Volumes of prose and of verse 
In numbers sufficient 
To gild and to dignify 
What choice ones called "trade." 

Horace, at first, was quite lofty, 
And often said, "PoohP' 
But he had, after all. 
Some slight inklings of sense; 
And before his first year was over 
He hummed in a different measure.' 
He now saw "the business" 
As a great feat 

Of imagination and technique, 
A towering, well-knit structure 
Of many fine cantos ; 
And Theophilus M. Decker 
As a high creative spirit. 
Strong and compelling: 
\ 115 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

A man of mark, of poise, and of breadth; 

Prompt and able in all his relations; 

A prestidigitator 

Of twenty times poor Horace's own power; 

Deft at home with his wife and his family, 

Agile and stout 'gainst his fellow-paladins, 

Dextrous indeed with his hundreds of helpers, 

Prompt with his royalties, 

A pillar of the church, 

A stanch column in the politics of his ward, 

Keen and wary with the assessor, 

And annually gathering in. 

Despite difficulties and competition. 

Sixteen or eighteen per cent 

For self, family, and the clan of the "house"; 

Doing it easily, lightly, 

And jocularly. . . . 

"He's a magician!" cried Horace, 

Elate with a promised promotion; 

"Yea, he's an Artist!" 

Horace advanced. 
His wife can dress in high feather 
From husband's own purse; 
Her father smiles on him at last. 
And little Wilfrid and Imogene 
Are allowed to respect 
Their immediate progenitor. 
Horace now sits at a roller-top, 
Twiddling his thumbs 

f 116 1 



THE "ART OF LIFE" 

And knitting his brows at young authors 
Who, flighty and over- "artistic," 
Might, with a few slight concessions, 
Do better. 

Both for the "house" and themselves. 
If only . . . 



THE ALIEN 

As a child, 

In her own native town. 

She played amidst — 

But you, complaisant reader, 

Shall set the scene quite as you choose. 

Make her loved region 

Plainland or mountain, at your wish; 

And her natal place 

A close-built town of stuccoed fronts 

With a baroque-fa gaded church for the dull priest, 

Crushed down by a deep pediment; 

Or let the church soar up in bulbous spires. 

From many loose, disheveled shacks of wood. 

(In either case, make nothing of the school.) 

And let an unbridged river mope through wide 

marshes. 
Or dash in headlong flight 
Over a broad, sandy bottom to the sea. 
Let there be many unwilling soldiers. 
To cow their brothers of the streets and fields; 
And tyrannous oiBBcials in abundant measure. 
Who draw their sanction from some distant capital — 
Or act without it; 
And let there be a few stout hearts. 
Impelled by hope, or misery, or courage, 
[ 118 1 



THE ALIEN 

Or all three, 

To venture toward the other world. 

She crossed at ten; 

And after many days they showed her, 

Through a far-shimmering, watery haze, 

A towering, iron-spiked head, 

And told her she was free. 

Free in the close-built streets of a tight-packed city; 
Free in the swirling tide of the lately-come and the 

about- to-come; 
Free to trip or trudge behind a push-cart 
Through clattering ways; or, later, 
To mouse beneath a counter 
On which were heaped coarse gloves and shirts and 

shoes — 
Or, an it please you better, 
Strange cheeses and odd fruits or vegetables 
Plaited in strings or netted in festoons. 
And through it all — this newness — 
One's own dear tongue, one's old home ways. 

After a time, courted in the hurly-burly 
By one from her own province; 
Then another shop, better and bigger. 
With their own infants playing on the floor. 
Or chancing fate outside; 
And one of these, a son. 
Destined to be the family's morning-star — 
[ 119] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Nay, its bright sun in the new heaven; 

The brightest boy in school — 

That school where this strange people 

Offered — and compelled — instruction free. 

Then, after some brief years. 

Through which he sharpened up his wits 

On theory and practice, 

He took his father's petty shop and juggled it. 

It grew within his hands, beneath their eyes, 

To proportions quite unprecedented. 

He walked the shining road of quick success. 

Skipping from peak to peak. 

At thirty-jfive 

He labored in one palace, lived in another. 

And hundreds from his mother's country. 

And other hundreds of abject natives, 

Slaved for his further good. 

Soon her grandsons were sporting familiarly 
Through picture-gallery or ballroom, 
And harrying costly furniture, 
Jacobean, Louis Seize or Empire — 
It changed with passing seasons — 
In childish games. 

There were dinners, stately showy things. 
From which she was discreetly absent. 
There were receptions, with music, let us say. 
At which she would appear briefly 
In distant doorways. 

Blinking dark, narrow eyes at the incredible scene, 
[ 120 1 



THE ALIEN 

And then retiring. 

It was a strange, strange world — 

A world apart from her, 

And she apart from it. 

She stumbled through its purlieus 

(Gorgeous they seemed), 

And stammered through its language 

(One she had never rightly learned to speak). 

In her retired bedroom 

She gossiped with a few old cronies 

Of origin like hers, 

And shyly entertained her grandchildren. 

When they would permit. 

On certain designated days 

Women, from somewhere, 

Went by, to somewhere. 

On pubHc business — to "vote," she heard it said: 

A thing repellent and incredible. 

Other things, no less repellent and incredible 

Were printed in the papers, she was told; 

But these she never read. 

In due course her grandsons 

Turned lawyers, doctors, "business men," 

With weapons of offense and of defense 

Unknown throughout her clan in earlier days. 

More than ever was she safeguarded and entrenched 

In this remote and alien world. 

[ 121 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

A great war came. 

The quarrel had two sides, she heard. 

How two? 

Her heart, forgetful quite of old injustices. 

Was with the land where stood the little town. 

On mountain-stream or plain, 

Which once had been her home, 

The spot of her nativity. 

And 'midst the family's recent splendors 

The younger generations spoke up hotly 

(With less discretion than they used outside) 

About the exactions of "Americans" 

As to the attitude of newer stocks; 

And one young lad flung out. 

In a moment of high exasperation. 

That he would go and help his people's cause. 

"Will they let you come back.?" she quavered. 

Laughter: and it was explained 

That the means for letting people in 

Were in good order. 

But that the means for keeping people out 

Were good as missing. 

So, quietude. 

The world was kind and fair; 

Privileges were many; obligations, light. 

A good old soul, all vague and isolate. 

Rocked to and fro in her protected chamber; 

A little in one world, 

A little in another, 

[ 122 ] 



THE ALIEN 

A good deal out of both ; 

But tending, 

By all the strength of lengthening age 

And early ties, 

To drift backward toward that world - 

For her at once both young and old — 

Where she began. 

Peace; let her fall asleep. 

But let her sons keep open eyes — 

And turn them the right way. 



TOWARD CHILDHOOD 

Backward, O Time, and for a single hour 
Make a small child of him who stands before us 
At the advanced age of seventy-five — 
Leander M. Coggswell, multimillionaire. 

In these days gross wealth drugs the very atmosphere, 
And perhaps too little of it has got into the present 

Lines. 
Shall I seem, now, to over-do 
If I give Mr. C. one hundred millions? 
Very well; they're his. 

He lives to-day in semi-retirement. 

And has partly forgotten how the money came; 

Completely so, if asked officially. 

Others have now bent their backs to the great burden; 

He no longer keeps tab, he tells us, on the workings 

of the vast machine. 
He buys now and then a picture, a coronet, a castle; 
He smiles impartially on the great and on the small. 
On the heedless and on the inquisitive. 
Reads detective stories, 
f And plays croquet. 

Now let us make him a little younger. 
We strip him first of his bland leisure 
\ 124 1 



TOWARD CHILDHOOD 

And of his more puerile interests. 

Five years ago — yes, even less — 

He was aflame to found, to furnish, to fill 

His great museum, 

He, the modern Medici — Cosimo and Lorenzo in one. 

Books, manuscripts, madonnas choked his days; 

Art and learning walked captive at his heels. 

But Caesar never grew so great, you say. 

Upon such meat as that? 

Of course not. There was a previous period: 

A phantasmagoric jumble of varied interests 

Filled the public air; all was kept aloft 

By superhuman skill, and all was juggled 

Just a bit too swiftly for the questioning eye to 

follow — 
Even for the interested orb 
Of the Uncle of us all : 
Banks, foundries, railways, tanks, stock market, 

state legislatures, what you will; 
Everything brought about with suave and Mephis- 
tophelean mien 
By the great Thaumaturge, 
While deft assistants at the lesser tables 
Passed on the properties and dressed the scene. 

Peeling away still further from our friend 
His years, his dexterity, his general grandeur. 
We find him on a lower stage before a poorer audience. 
Doing less skillfully and on a smaller scale 
I 125 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

The tricks that made the man — himself. 
It seems, viewed retrospectively, a mere rehearsal 
Of his immense Performance. 
Here, industrious, thrifty and alert 
(To give his qualities their better names). 
He practiced, 

In semi-privacy and with no possibility of praise, 
The virtues he lauded, later, 

In pamphlets and addresses aimed at the nation's 
youth. 

Back still farther. 

No company, now; no firm: 

Just a lone young individual, 

Of parentage blent and non-distinguished, let us say. 

With a young helpmate of his own kind; 

Both struggling together for a foothold, 

Both putting forth their strained endeavors 

To feed and clothe a little flock. 

And to "get on." 

Next go his wife and children. 

We have left now only a young clerk or handy-man. 

Of lingo semi-rustic, semi-foreign, semi-citified, quite 

as you like; 
Moling away beneath the surface. 
Yet coming up, at intervals. 
To see the Main Chance shining in the sky; 
Holding his own, and more, against all youthful 

rivals, 

[ 126 ] 



TOWARD CHILDHOOD 

And shaping vigorously the grand ideals 
Which, later, were to fire his heart — and ours. 

Next we deprive him of his office-stool. 

Or of his chance to labor heartily out in the sheds. 

He*s but a boy at school; 

Quick, quick, with slate and pencil; 

Sharp, sharp, among the playground's crowd. 

Next knee-trousers go. 

We have a child of four in laughable habiliments 

Preserved by some uncouth disciple of Daguerre, 

And later shown, in half-tones. 

For the derisive adoration of the world; 

But with a look, sly and determined, in the eyes. 

Which promises much. 

Now but an infant-in-arms, 

Borne in long, convoluted skirts. 

"Oh, what a forehead!'* cries a visiting aunt, 

Pushing the frilled cap back; 

And, kissing such brows, mothers have often said, 

with awe: 
"He may be president." 

Lastly, a new-born babe 

Hugged close within a home 

On some elm-shaded street, 

Or in some slattern village farther West, 

Or in some stony cabin far beyond our bounds. 

Can we go on? 

[ m] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Yes, with Wordsworth, who has Intimations, 
And who may have bestowed on him 
Long streamers of supernal — or infernal — glory; 
With Kant, who has Innate Ideas, 
And who may well have packed the baby full 
Of pre-accumulated notions and experiences; 
Or with Galton, who exploits Heredity, 
And who may have presented a complete outfit 
Of traits passed on from linked forefathers; 
Or with Taine, who comes out strongly for Environ- 
ment, 
And who perhaps decreed that he should be 
Quite largely what Surroundings made him. 
Modern opinion and current fashion 
May favor this last theory still. 

Thus our new-born hero came at once 

Within a range of influences and waiting opportuni- 
ties 

Which caused his Life to follow 

As easily and inevitably 

As a corollary upon a theorem proved — 

As naturally as some prepotent cloud, 

Careering through the littered heavens, 

Helps weave strange, disconcerting patterns on 
earth's fields. 

H 'm! Are we not all clouds together? — 
Minor cirri, dumpy cumuli. 
Multitudinous shreds of vapor, 
r 128 1 



TOWARD CHILDHOOD 

Rosy or gray, 

That float or drive about in tiny tatters; 
And some fixed fault within the national sky 
Prevents a proper taming of our thunder-heads. 
We wait — and no high Cloud-Compeller comes 
To help us master our Preponderates. 



THE OUTSIDER 

Could the word but be printed 

With an extra vowel and an accent grave. 

Like this: 

The Outsidere, 

You would see at once 

That a woman was intended. 

However, 

The shortcomings of the English tongue. 

Whether we speak it or print it. 

Are serious and many — 

One can but do one's best. 

A woman, then; ' 

Which woman (one of two), 

You shall yourself decide. 

Little Magda Vale was gay, but rather casual 
One might e'en say, careless; 
For few of her associates really knew 
If she was "Miss" or "Mrs." — 
Or, indeed, whether the name she used 
Was actually hers at all. 
These associates 

Were gentlemen, and other ladies like herself. 
After a few attempts 
In the direction of society, 
[ 130 1 



THE OUTSroER 

She wisely limited her choice 
To the above. 

Magda was a most merry little party — 

Diverting, good-humored, and resourceful; 

Her foyer always welcoming and warm. 

But why hint at a hearthstone? 

Rather should you see 

A cheery little bonfire in the dusk. 

By the gypsying roadside, 

In some small corner of the wood — 

A bonfire at whose kindly blaze 

Men who had yet no fireside of their own, 

Or who were, for the nonce, 

Far afield from such domestic feature, 

Might warm their hands and hearts. 

And so upon their way. Enough. 

In one of her attempts upon society 

Magda had met with Catherine Poole. 

Catherine was thirty-three (some years the elder). 

Fortune-favored, single. 

Cold and worldly-wise. 

After the encounter, the frosted interloper 

Withdrew to other scenes, — 

Far, far; the chill spread wide. 

They never "met" a second time. 

Catherine lived her days 
In a big, frigid, pompous house 
I 131 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Full of folk too old. 

The presence of a widowed younger sister 

And one plaintive child 

Added to her drear environment 

Little of warmth and brightness. 

When she was some years older. 

And single still, 

She found that she had slowly faded 

To a mere stay-at-home: 

Directing the daily routine 

For scanty thanks, 

And passing through long evenings, somehow. 

With ancient, drowsy aunts and uncles. 

It was dull, dull, dull. 

Young men never came. 

Except inferior clerks 

With papers from some office. 

The theaters could no more entertain; 

And picture-galleries 

Had long since been a mockery — 

Where was life's color? 

Charity, organized or not, 

Was colder than the grave; 

Books were a blank, and church was but a void. 

Who shall detail the frozen hours 

That icicled her rosary? 

Though there were days when she could hug 

Her sister's child — 

[ 132 1 



THE OUTSIDER 

And when, indeed, she must — 

There were more when she could not. 

There were other days 

When weddings in her street 

Would draw her curtains close 

And push her backward to the sewing-room. 

Where she would prick her fingers, bite her lips, 

And drop self-pitying tears on anything. 

After some years, her very finger-tips 

Grew cold. 

Within the pallid marble monument 

That cooled her chamber 

No glow, no warming cheer. 

No flicker, even. 

And then she saw at last 

(Tho' she had seen it often) 

A fading heap of embers. 

" This must do," she said. 

She married; a "family friend" — 

Seasoned, mature, and formal, 

Of substance and position, 

Of titles and degrees. 

She was a wife of mark — 

A consort, one might even say. 

She could go anywhere; 

And now, once more, she did. 

The last week of the honeymoon 
Took wife and husband 

[ 133 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Out to a night of dancing, lights and song — 

A "show" in a great house that welcomed all. 

The evening ended 

With shouts of numbers and with slams of doors. 

Under the canopy two women, among many. 

Stood in the flirts of snow: 

Our Catherine, regal, scornful, 

Bored, dissatisfied; 

And at her elbow, almost, 

A merry little party — 

Merry still, 

Tho' nearing the penumbra of the days 

When cold correctness and exact reserve 

Should pay for earlier ease — 

A merry little party, as I say. 

Striking in garb 

And specious in complexion; 

Working vivacious, sparkling eyes. 

And weaving lips in patterns made to suit 

The satisfied gallant close by her side — 

Another happy soul, and not too old: 

Her husband, mayhap; mayhap not. 

At any rate, the joy of life was hers. 

Well, what are rules, if one's not in the game? 

And what are laws to one without the pale? 

And on what basis shall society 

Settle with debtor and delinquent 

Who finds the half more to her than the whole? 

Time must aid. 

[ 134 ] 



THE OUTSroER 

Thus "Magda" brushed our Catherine, 

And smiled toward her attendant as she viewed 

The pottering devotion, 

GauchCy perfunctory, 

Of the numb-fingered husband. 

So these two: 

One, outside of Hfe, but in society; 

The other. 

Outside society, but at the heart of life — 

Or so she fancied. 

Well, well; what do you make of this? 

"What do you make of it, yourself?'* 

Perhaps you '11 ask. 

Moiy I have reached the end, 

And I fall silent. 



GLARE 

By the time our young man 

Had reached nineteen, 

Ambition and vanity 

Called loudly for a vent. 

If he was to live — 

In any satisfying sense — 

He must climb, 

And he must make parade. 

Then, too, the need of self-expression 

(Or, at least, of self-assertion) 

May have helped torture him. 

Anyhow, he must escape; 

So, to be brief. 

He went upon the stage. 

Soon he was trailing 
Behind a manager. 

Managers, rather — for they were many. 
They came and went. 
Now one and now another. 
Loose irresponsibles : 
Most of them half -optimist, half -shark; 
And with such escort 
He wove a clanking chain 
From town to town, 
With one night here, the next one there; 
[ 136 ] 



GLARE 

With food and sleep as they might happen, 

And proper human Hfe 

Taking its poor chances 

Between the chinks: 

Youth's heyday jaunt, 

A lengthened jest — 

Sometimes a painful one, 

Yet still a merry. 

But all his many chiefs 

In one thing were alike: 

They led him on to lavish his own self — 

His young enthusiasm, 

Hope and energy. 

He was joyously profuse. 

Spending himself before the public glare. 

While older heads, 

Illumed with lesser light, 

Told privately their takings behind the scene. 

He thought himself largely repaid 

In "opportunities" 

And in "experience.** 

There was a salary, true; 

But that was little, even the leader said. 

When weighed with all the rest. 

After some years of this — 
Years which he might have turned 
To better (or to different) account — 
Youth said good-bye; 

[ 137 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

Energy abated; 

Enthusiasm waned; 

Hope, crouching low, refused to budge. 

The roseate world had gradually turned gray. 

Mere Mediocrity 

Laid hands on him, 

Grinned in his face. 

And held him in the glare 

That thousands might be bored. 

Life lost its savor. 

But he might not leave the table: 

The dishes rattled, — 

He must seem to eat. 

He was almost a failure, 

And he was doomed 

To fail in — public. 

Night after night 

Crowds came and stared 

At his predicament. 

He who but writes a book may fail — 

And no one knows; 

Whereas, an actor . . . ! 

At forty-one our friend 

Saw his "career" for what it was; 

Saw too that one strong wrench 

Must soon be made 

If he were ever 

To lift himself from that o'er-lighted rut 

Of non-success. 

f 138 1 



I' 



GLARE 

He knew the life — that, and none other; 

But he must take its reverse side. 

He did so. 

He, young, had toiled for older heads; 

Now, middle-aged, the young must toil for him. 

Thus he became a manager in turn, 

And took his toll. 

Come, youth! 

Come with your charm and freshness. 

Your dynamic hopes. 

Your earnestness and generosity, — 

Mixed with what lower matter there may be, — 

And heave yourseK into the roaring furnace. 

Before whose maw the stoker stands, 

Mired in a pulp of shredded contracts. 

Transmuting such as you 

Into fame and profit. 

Give yourseK freely; 

Yield what can never 

Be rightly recompensed. 

Yet, if you shrivel. 

Bear in mind that he must shrivel too. 

Begrimed, with sweaty brow. 

And bended back and aching arms, 

He cries out 

His own excessive hardships. 

Yet save for him, remember. 

You could not hope to flame. 

To flare, to scintillate; 

f 139 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

You would be 

But a dull clod of coal 

In the dim mine of home. 

Be grateful: 

Who, in this bright day, 

Would stay unlighted and unknown? 

Certes not you and I. 



THE DAY OF DANGER 

What day is that? you ask; 
Does not every day 
Bring its own perils? 
And yet, once past the rocks and rapids 
Of childhood, youth, 
And of adjustment to the world of men. 
May not one hope to pass out smoothly 
Into the wide, quiet waters 
Of the middle years? 
Yes, yes; you are entitled to your view - 
\\ And I to mine. 

The subject of these lines escaped 
The various dangers that attend 
One's advent in this world. 
That day, at least. 
Of all days the most fateful. 
Brought him no patent harm: 
So pass it by. 

Succeeding days and years 
Treated him, for a time. 
With touch no less forbearing. 
As an infant in arms 
He ran the usual risks — 
And outran them. 

[ 141 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

As a child of six or eight 

He met the usual hurdles — 

And took them handily. 

As a boy of fourteen 

He worked his way without undue mishap 

Through the high seas of yeasty adolescence. 

As a youth of eighteen, 

Neither boy nor man, 

Harried by novel passions and half-disclosed desires. 

He struggled to adjust himself as best he might 

To the Visible Framework — 

To square his new and exigent demands 

With the great Code half-seen and haK-divined, 

And made no serious errors. 

When he was twenty-two. 

Love and love's concerns, 

As linked with common matrimonial intent, 

Swerved him a trifle from the way; 

But he regained his equilibrium soon 

And entered happily 

The gates of wedded life. 

At twenty-six he felt himself well-rooted 

In a material way: established in his life-work. 

And past all risk of being companied 

By Rashness and by Inexperience 

To the bankruptcy court. 

And at thirty all was well: 

A wife, a home, 

An interesting little family. 

And the respect that goes 

I 142] 



THE DAY OF DANGER 

With a fair measure of practical success. 

Cleverly brought about. 

Nothing to do, apparently, 

But to go on as he had gone before: 

"Keeping it up"; dealing more cards in order due 

From the same flattering pack. 

"No danger here; none yet," you say. 

Nor for some years to come. 

The next five brought him little change — 

Too little. 

Like some young tree, one that has enjoyed 

A signal period of growth and efflorescence. 

And then, despite fond hopes for growth continued, 

Stands as it is, was our poor friend. 

And when, as he was nearing thirty-eight. 

His firm became a company, 

He was made, not president. 

But merely treasurer. 

Forty, forty-two, found him a fixture — 
Steady, respected and dependable. 
Loved by his wife — to a fair degree, admired. 
His children gave him 
A larger measure of regard 
Than is the wont of modern youth. 
He sat on platforms at trade conventions; 
He passed the plate at church. 
The company relied, almost unconsciously. 
On his stability — yet never could quite see 
[ 143 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

An increased salary. In short, 

Taken for granted; put in a place and kept there. 

'T is the harum-scarum — the man that threatens 

To fly the track, yet somehow keeps it — 

Who wins appreciation; 

And humdrum merit draws no comment 

Until it slips and fails. 

At forty-five our friend sat down 
To take account of stock, 
And asked himself that fatal question: 
"Does it pay.?" 
Plodding virtue. 
Calmly accepted on every side: 
Treasurer and wheelhorse at the office; 
Wheelhorse and treasurer in the home. 
Younger men were passing him 
And bearing off life's prizes; 
And daily use had made home faces dull. 
Even the dearest. 

Youth, youth encompassed him, — 
Here, as a rival. 
There, almost as a snare. 
If youth, in one form, laid a tax, 
Might he not ask it, in another, 
To bring him recompense.? 
Not for much longer 
Could he count himself as young. 
Had he lived? 

Had life really satisfied him? 
[ 144 ] 



THE DAY OF DANGER 

Was it, as lived by him just now. 
Worth while? 



For a man of his position and his age, 

There are two classic, consecrated sins: 

One may steal away from home 

In company that 's disallowed, 

Severing long-clasped links, 

And setting a new young face 

In place of one long known and loved; 

Or one may steal, in bald and literal sense, 

The funds committed to one's care, and tangle up 

The fiscal world of trust and credit. 

Men there have been who, avid, 

Ambitious, stung to impatience 

Past all sight of consequences. 

And conscious that the twilight flush 

Could not much longer stay. 

Have seized on both these sins at once 

And lugged them off together — 

Breaking at the quarter-post, 

And breaking completely. 

Thus our friend : 

His day of danger came at forty-five. 

Resulted from this grind of daily goodness. 
Projected through a stale and sapless future. 
An upset oflBce and an outraged home: 
A wife shocked and affronted; 
Directors — nine — up in the air; 
f 145 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

A fortnight of general gossip and dismay; 
Then overtures, 

At long range and through devious channels. 
For composition and forgiveness. 

His wife, benumbed, 

Had not the heart or spirit to reproach. 

His sons impatiently, yet silently. 

Cursed him for a fool. 

His daughters found it hard. 

For many a week, to look him in the face. 

His fellow-officers glozed the matter broadly. 

Displaying ostentatiously, but with due caution, 

Some specious proofs of confidence restored. 

Acceptance by the closer and the greater 

Aided the lesser and the more removed 

In their prompt search for ways and means 

By which they might adjust 

Their principles and their procedure 

To things as they had come to be; 

And all was well. 



Then, for twenty years, 
A man subdued 

Walked with constraint and care 
Through scenes familiar; 
Never quite forgiven. 
Never quite trusted. 
Either through hours of work, or after. 
[ 146 ] 



THE DAY OF DANGER 

And when he died 

Voices were found to say: 

"Well, anyhow, he lived — 

He was a gay dog in his day." 

And even sooner there were other men 

Who, when ten pickers and stealers 

Thrust themselves beyond due bounds. 

Drew slanting sanction 

(Or at least looked 

For understanding and indulgence) 

From so conspicuous and accredited a case. 

More dangerous than birth. 

Or croup and scarlatina. 

Or pubescent perturbations. 

Or wild first love. 

Or earliest venturings in the world of men, 

Are the middle years — 

For one who. 

Jog-trotting faithfully through their long reaches. 

Sees pleasures and rewards fall elsewhere. 

And comes to feel 

That soon the ardent pulse of life 

Must fall, turn cold, expire. 



CHAMELEON 

I PRESUME you have sometime bought 

A package of blotting-paper, 

With each sheet cut to one particular size; 

They come nine inches by four. 

And in various colors: 

White, blue, gray, yellow, pink (or red) — 

In fact, almost everything but black; 

And black, one would suppose, might easily be added. 

At any rate, I shall add it here. 

Adelia Page, at nineteen, was purest white. 

She lapped up impressions of whatever sort 

And registered them with such clear-cut naivete 

That any one could read them — 

Even a young college professor. 

Such a one she met — a nice youth of twenty-five. 

She reproduced on her immaculate surface 

All his own thoughts and views. 

And showed them back to him most candidly: 

He found her highly sympathetic and intelligent. 

He was not for books alone; 

He danced with grace and chatted pleasantly. 

He was ingenuous — as white as she. 

They found each other charming, and they paired. 

Alma mater would always care for him, of course; 
But after a while he grew a little dull, 
f 148 1 



CHAMELEON 

There were disappointments, and there was a cooHng 

of early zeal: 
Under the white sheet at the top was one of bluish 

gray. 
The young wife noted the difference the years were 

bringing, 
Said little, but grew subdued in tone herself. 
Took her color from him, and showed him 
His own sober face in hers. 

Yes, alma mater was prepared to care for him 

So long as he lived and walked discreetly; 

But could not guarantee that he would live. 

In fact, he did not. He died at thirty and left behind 

A grayness greater still. 

After a time the arts began to console her. 
She entered a kind of decorous Bohemia, 
And here she met a painter. 
By contrast with the lost one, 
He was dashing and worldly; 
He had swing, momentum, assurance. 
His heart was on his sleeve — 
He spoke at their third meeting. 
Yes, under the sheet of gray was one of reddish pink — 
ft> Or pinkish red. 

They married. She took in some measure her hue 

from him, 
Soaked up his jargon, his insouciance. 
His free bohemian ways. 

[ 149 ] 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

The gray past vanished as they started Hfe 

Roseately 

In a studio apartment; 

But within a year she saw his color more clearly — 

His colors, one would better say: 

Red, as a roisterer; 

As a provider, merely pink. 

The charming studio could not be maintained, 

Nor could she maintain her earlier ascendancy over 

him 
Against certain gay young creatures in his middle 

distance. 
Her own new ways, assumed and simulated 
In rivalry with theirs, 
Deceived no one, her husband least of all. 
And so they wrote together, "We must part" ; 
And these decisive words showed with perfect 

clearness 
Cj Upon that scrap of indeterminate red. 

She passed some years in fingering the simple tie 
That held the sheets together. 
After due deliberation she drew another: 
She wished no dull, restricted future, like her first; 
No stormy and precarious life, such as the second. 
Presently the third hope appeared. 
He shone eloquently from a large platform 
Upon a responsive audience: 

A man of wide experience, and of connections service- 
able, if not high. 

[ 150 1 



ff 



CHAMELEON 

Some called him statesman; others, poHtician. 

He had a place and well knew how to hold it — 

Or to get another quite as good. 

He had an income, and now saw, in middle life, 

The way to make it greater. 

Within three months she had drawn another sheet 

from her packet — 
One between buff and yellow — 
And was Mrs. F. W. MacCartney, 
Wife of the Honorable Frank. 

She now had a position and the means to maintain it. 
She had stagnated in life's pools; 
She had dashed through its rapids; 
And it was a comfort, at thirty-six, 
To be borne along on a wide, equably- flowing stream, 
To some definite and desirable goal — 
Washington, D.C., it appeared. 
Now and again she sat on platforms. 
And she promoted their common interests socially; 
But she declined to serve as a member 
Of the domestic committee of ways and means : 
»She took unquestioningly what her husband gave. 
In later years, during a hot campaign, 
They told her plainly, as a voter and candidate, 
That she would have done well to know 
A little better whence her income came — 
A reproach which might be brought 
(Once criticism's gates are opened wide) 
Against many wives as worthy quite as she; 
[ 151 1 



■h^ 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

But yellow, or even buff, is a hard hue to keep clean. 
With the years her clarion-colored husband grew 

dingy — honor rang less clear; 
And she grew careless and dingy too. 
He died suddenly, at fifty, 

After a year or two near the dome of the Capitol, 
And left her rather poor. 
Despite his later courses, 
Criticism was — restrained. 
Yet, had she been less dulled by grief, 
Or less devotedly disposed 
To hallow and idealize his memory, 
She might have seen the heavens 
As a general yellowish grime. 

Very soon she took her packet again in hand 

And turned it over. 

Upon the bottom she saw an oblong bit of black. 

Long enough had she responded and reflected; 

And she had registered sensations in over-plenty. 

Black gave back no sign — black was the only wear. 

Through influence 

She became an undistinguished figure in the public 

service, 
And wore black till she died. 



DELIQUESCENCE 

We loved him; 

But he faded gradually from our sight. 

When I say, "loved him," 

It just means — 

We liked him pretty well : 

Well enough, that is, to hold him if we could. 

At what stage of his departure 
Shall I try to snatch him back 
For your attention? 
Shall it be the moment 
When he first betrayed 
His weariness and discontent 
With us, our mediocre neighborhood, 
Our unpretentious ways? 
Or when professional relations 
With the prominent and rich 
Had shown him unmistakably 
A door to finer things and higher life, 
Should he but care to use it? 
Or shall it be at that last hour 
When "society," 
In tardy consciousness 
Of pleasant manners and of perfect taste, 
Enclasped him, whisked him through its portals, 
And shut them tight and left us sad outside? 
[ 153 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

When all this happened. 

He was well past thirty-four. 

The wonder only is 

It had not happened sooner. 

But Pomp and Show 

Have not the clearest eye 

For taste and merit. 

However, after some delay. 

It was agreed that no one 

Could better place a porch. 

Perform a fox-trot. 

Do exedras in gardens. 

Drape galleries with tapestries. 

Pass a cup of tea. 

Or hang long rows of lusters 

From ballroom ceilings. 

And so he left our simple street: 

He disappeared, dissolved, melted away. 

To re-crystallize 

In a more glittering environment; 

And none of us was urged 

To follow him 

To his new sphere. 

Of all our little group 
None felt the deprivation 
More than his Auntie Peck 
(She was not his auntie; she was everybody's) 
And "Cousin" Clementine. 
For in his youth he 'd been a member 
[ 154 ] 



DELIQUESCENCE 

Of Auntie's Bible-class; 

And in the earlier days 

Of his professional struggles 

Clementine had often asked him 

On Sunday nights to tea, 

And they had gone together 

To frugal parties, simple sociables; 

And Clementine and Auntie both 

Had worked in unison 

To make the city 

Less strange and less inhospitable 

To a nice but friendless fellow. 

"He's gone!" said Auntie Peck in tears. 

And they were left, two empty shells. 

Upon an ebb-bared shore. 

Months passed. He never came 
To "take them up." 

They lay neglected, under heaven's great dome. 
And read, at short and shortening intervals. 
Of the social doings and advances 
Of this most popular bachelor. 
The flowery path he trod 
Led him to dinners, dances, opera boxes; 
And now and then 't was noted he repaid 
This comprehensive hospitality 
By comprehensive entertainments of his own, 
At some high, well-regarded hostelry. 
"I hope he's happy," said Auntie Peck, 
Not without bitterness, 
f 155 1 



LINES LONG AND SHORT 

And presently her bitterness increased. 

Loyalty, or policy, or some cause obscure, 

Soon brought the young Olympian 

To a wedding 

Upon the edge of his old quarter; 

And Auntie Peck and Clementine, 

As family friends of early date. 

Were summoned too. 

They saw him plainly 'cross the ballroom's width; 

And he — perhaps — saw them. 

But, if so, 't was in some dream, 

In some fantastic and improbable mirage. 

They looked so vague he scarce could chance a bow. 

"Gone, quite!" sighed Clementine. 

For them his deliquescence was complete. 

How to solidify him once again 

For a deserved revenge.^ 

"Let all these dinner-parties and receptions," 

Said Auntie Peck, one evening, in their parlor, 

"Lead him to the point 

To which they commonly conduct a fine young 

man — 
To marriage." 

"Yes," said Clementine; "and let him marry 
Some haughty girl, within that very set. 
Who '11 show him in short order 
That he is, after all, a mere outsider, 
And who will lead him such a life — '* 
"Yes," said Auntie Peck; "and let her ask 
f 156 1 



DELIQUESCENCE 

For palaces, and pleasures, and esplanades. 

And tapestries, and chandeliers, and closets, closets, 

closets. 
In measure twenty times beyond his power to give; 
And let him soon grow gray with worry — 
Before he's fifty, anyhow — " 
"Yes," said Clementine; "and let her love another 

man, 
Younger and richer and handsomer — " 
"Yes," said Auntie Peck; "and let him find it out. 
And let them brave and taunt him, 
And let him take a pistol from a drawer, 
And hold it to his head ..." 

The doorbell buzzed. 

In the bright opening 

Their victim stood and smiled. 

"My dear, dear boy!" sobbed Auntie Peck; 

"How glad we are to see you!" 

She kissed him — 

And robbed him of his future. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



018 597 292 6 



